Mold and Hammerhead core from Sabot Technologies.



Sabot Pressure Wads from Sabot Technologies.



Completed Hammerheads



Lots of load work and target shooting... Then a boar hog shows up at a protein feeder at night.



Two nights later at 10 pm, clear night, great moon illumination, no night optic stuff or lights, just a dark hog against native grasses. The hog is Hammered at 50-yards.

Very cool!! Tell me more about the rifle and the ammo you are using. Is the firearm a smooth bore or rifled? 12 or 20 G? That is really nice!!

what is the recoil like?


I talked to some guys in Africa that were from Illinois who had to use slug guns.


they were telling me that a deer hit with a 12 gauge slug will run a fair distance. They told me they got more DRT kills with a 20 gauge for some reason.

Good Job...now go shoot about 7,000,000 more hogs and we will be fine.

I received my SPWs and the Hammerhead Mold and hopefully my outcome will be the same as yours.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr

Thanks for sharing this. I love that marlin Sweet rifle? I think ?

Good morning guys! Yep, the Marlin 512 is a sweet slug gun with a 21" rifled barrel, it was made for several years around 2000. It does kick like a mule but was never intended to be a range gun. On the range, I shoot it with a ski jacket type life vest. In the field, I do not notice the recoil. I'm going to start using my Lead Sled for load and chrony work.

I will be back with more on the load, but right now I have to get my hound out of my reloading room. He has been sleeping in there with the airconditioning since the heat has come on so strong. I'm trying to teach him the basics of reloading.

I cast the Hammerhead core with a 6:4, linotype to wheel weights alloy, more about it in a bit. The sabots are only available through Slugs-R-Us. After trying them out, I bought a considerable lot of the sabot pressure wads as accuracy was on par with Lightfields, the most accurate factory ammunition I've shot across several slug guns. I have a bunch of powders, but Blue Dot has become my go-to slug powder. It has an appropriate volume density that is an excellent match for filling the component stack in a 3" hull. I charge the 3" Cheddite hull with 39.8-grains. A maximum charge is 40 grains.

When I cast, I was thinking more about a penetration with a sturdy alloy; the lot had a 29 BHN. The problem with more hardened alloys is that as it cures the diameter over what has been cast increases slightly. What I ended up was a tight-fitting core. The Sabot Technologies sabot pressure wad stays with the core all the way to impact. At impact, the wad stays behind, and the core continues. I believe that with the harder alloy I used, with its slightly higher cured diameter, it is impeding separation of the components; hence, robbing the penetration of the core.

Beyond what ammunition I have loaded, I'm out of cores and need to recast. The alloy for the next batch will be either pure lead or wheel weights. The pure lead will cast slightly under the mold diameter, and wheel weights are generally neutral. When I say over or under diameter, I'm expressing the difference as .000X". A minimal change, but it matters. I will also powder coat the cores to keep them slick as possible.

What brought on all the higher thinking was field experience. The only place I need a slug gun is the East Lake NWR whitetail and nilgai public draw hunt. When I was ready to shoot hogs, I wanted to shoot large hogs and shoot them at as close to 100-yards as possible to determine the penetration and killing authority. I did manage to shoot three very large hogs, all at 100-yards, knocking all three off their feet, but never recovering them. Only one had a small amount of blood at the impact sight.

The first hog was a daylight hog I stalked up on back in early May. I honestly think it was the hog I killed the other night. At the shot, the Weaver scope was on 1X; I saw the sabot in flight through impact. It hit the hog a bit high on the right shoulder, a shot I like because it gets them off their feet. He went down and then back up. He started toward me, but was disoriented and did not know what happened. I had sat down in the grass and realized he was going to pass within inches of me, so I started standing up while I quietly worked the bolt. The hull stuck, failed to extract. He was walking rather than running, I could tell he did not feel good, but I saw no wound. He passed within a few feet of me, I kI never said anything to distract him as I could tell he wanted nothing to do with me. Initially, I thought that the core-sabot might have separated early, and I saw just the sabot hit him. The hog I shot had a hard calloused spot about the diameter of the Hammerhead's meplat, where hair was no longer growing.

I shot two more large hogs, both large with similar results. The final hog my wife was watching with field glasses. It was under the feeder lights at the house, and at the shot, my wife said she saw the sabot hit the point of aim. She noted that the white sabot under the lights looked like a laser beam in flight. We both watched the boar go down hard and stay down, while I watched it with another loaded round ready to go. After a few minutes, I went back into the house and suited up to go out in the tall grass. He was gone when we got out there.

All that brought on the more in-depth thinking about what was going on and it boiled down to a poor choice of alloy. As a life long centerfire reloader, I thought slugs would be simple. Its an art within itself!

Interesting! Do they make a mold where you can form a hollow point for some expansion and more shock to the pigs?

I don't think it needs anything. This is the point of entry, a poor point of impact, but heh, it was at night with no lights. Everything is two dimensional, missing depth. I thought the hog was broadside but he was actually quartering to me. I could stick my fist through the wound channel.



I will check the rules and see if I can post the wound channel picture.

I didn't see any objection to the image in the forum rules, how about this? If you would object to viewing a graphic wound channel picture, don't open the link.

Hammerhead slug wound channel ahead of the forward shoulder into the opposite shoulder. I have cut away the hide but not disturbed the would channel.

Mods, any problems with the post/image link, please delete the post.

Dayum. That shoulder is off the menu for sure.

I wonder how it would work for home defense? That’s an amazing amount of damage!

No lie. Anything that gets up and runs after that, damn sure isn't human.

The problem is that it would probably end up in your neighbor's house.