A couple months ago
@zx10wall approached me with a proposition: He'd lend me a Vulcan 3 set up to shoot slugs, if I was interested in competing with it at one of our local Xtreme Field Target matches here in Arizona. Included in that discussion was how slugs don't excite me much, and he thought this just might change my mind about them. I agreed to the very generous offer of a trial run with the V3.
The reason I'm not generally interested in slugs is because I have had so many poor and/or mediocre experiences with them. There have been a few standouts come through, but most have not been impressive. Of note, my prior slug experiences have all been with .22 or .177 and only up to about 55-60fpe.
The V3 sent by Derrick:
He upgraded the bottle to 700ccs.
Reg pressure of 170 BAR, pushing the 0.218" 34grain dish based Varmint Knockers to 1000fps for about 75fpe. All the shots I've taken over a chrono have been 995-1005 so pretty much single digit spreads.
Actual point of impacts from 20-100 yards are matching Strelok pretty closely using a BC of 0.120, so these slugs are close to that when going 1000fps.
I've only had 3 small shooting sessions with it but I've been impressed with accuracy each of those times. The most recent was this morning. Worked through 20-100 yards in 5 yard increments. Here are the pellet traps at probably about 40, 45, and 50 yards.
We're under a wind advisory right now, supposed to really pick up this afternoon. For the time I was shooting, NWS recorded 18-20mph sustained winds and gusts up to 30mph at their weather station about 3 miles away from home. And I believe I had every bit of that here at my house. Winds were left to right, quartering out from about 7 oclock, more of a tailwind than anything.
Here are all three buckets, shots are from 20-100 yards, buckets at all different rotations as I worked my way out to 100 yards. Shots were mostly getting pushed to the right just a bit, but that can't be seen in the groups since the buckets were never in the same orientation from group to group. Circles are 1 and 3/8 inches. Note the left-most paper-top row, second from left was the first attempt at 95 yards. Took me a minute to figure out I was impacting low but I'd forgotten to refill at 170 bar. Went and topped off and came back and shot the top, left target, also at 95 yards, and it was looking much better. Three of those shots at 95 yards are within 1/2 an inch. The other thing to note is the MOA challenge coin in the middle bucket. That was 5 shots at 100 yards, from bucket and sticks. Not quite covered by the coin, but almost, so maybe 1.2ish MOA, in 20-30mph winds, from bucket and sticks. Yeah, I'm impressed. Finally, kinda interesting to look at the right bucket and see the lead streaks from where a pellet got pushed right and hit the tip of the nail and exploded.
And a photo of that group under the moa coin. I'm assuming they're slightly higher than previous dope b/c of the tailwind.
After the above I placed one of the buckets at 35 yards and shot one magazine, offhand. 10 of the 12 shots were within the 1 and 3/8" circle. Seems the platform is a bit easier to shoot offhand than the dear to me Veterans, and maybe just a bit harder to shoot than the Ghost.
So, seems that somewhere above 60fpe and a BC greater than about 0.07, the slugs can indeed pull away from the pellets. Derrick was right, this gun changed my mind about slugs. From my experience, it all comes to breaking that threshold, below that, and a guy might as well shoot .22 Monster RDs or the .25 King Heavies since they'll outperform slugs. BUT, get over 60-65fpe, and there just might be something to all this slug hype.
If I was interested in a dedicated slug shooter, the V3 in .22, set up by Derrick as described above, would be at the top of the list.
(Hoping to shoot this gun at the Xtreme Field Target match this weekend. Looking like I might be the only slugger but I'll have fun in my class of one. I'll report back how the V3 ends up doing at the match).
