Varmint Knocker 32.8 or 34gr. are awesome. The NSA 29.5g. is great too.
I got one of the very first slug A liners to hit the USA from Fredrick a couple of years ago. When I started testing slugs in .25, there was absolutely no information at all. It was all for the .22 caliber slug liners. I decided to start testing everything myself and try to put together as much information as I could. I was lucky enough to hook up with both Dale at Varmint Knocker and Nick at NSA who both supplied me with slugs available for retail as well as many prototype slugs that were not on the market. I got so into the testing and trying to learn about the FX liner and slugs that testing was all I did, day in and day out for almost a year. After a little over a year I got a bit burnt out and started to slow down but still tested like 3 days a week. I’ve tested somewhere in the neighborhood of 17,000 slugs in the past 2 years and have learned a lot. With that being said, there is still plenty that I can’t explain or figure out. There are just some strange results that show up sometimes when testing slugs.
Anyway, here is a little I have learned that might help... Many attribute the success of how well a slug shoots based on the diameter of the slug....249”, .250”, .2503”, .254” etc... While testing almost every slug available, I sized every slug I had from .2485, .249, .2495, .250, .2503, .254. Meaning every slug I had, regardless of the size when it arrived, were sized down in each of the sizes listed above, if I could size it that is. By doing this, I could determine the factors that influenced accuracy and those that didn’t. Contrary to belief, because the liners are choked, the slug diameters between .2485-.2503” all shot similarly after the gun had been tuned for that particular slug. The .254” not so much although they do shoot well in the Lothar Walther Polygonal barrel. In the Slug A liner, the things that I found to affect accuracy the most were bearing surface, the base design, the ogive design, the weight and the diameter. As a general rule of thumb, most slugs shoot better at faster speeds than slower speeds. You can push them pretty hard without worrying about many of the problems associated with pellets at super fast speeds. I never had much luck at slower speeds and that kind of defeats the purpose of a high BC slug anyway. Biohazardman has had luck shooting various slugs at velocities ranging from very low to very high, I have not seen that to be the case in any of my testing. I’ve found almost every slug I’ve tested has a 30-40fps window where they shoot great, usually somewhere between 920-980fps. Outside that window they may shoot okay or just mediocre. It takes a fair bit of time to tune your gun for each particular slug unless you happen to get lucky. The relationship between the regulator pressure and hammer spring influences the accuracy a lot more with slug tuning than it does with pellets. I am not saying Biohazardman’s results didn’t happen, he has also tested a lot of slugs and there are a lot of variables. I just have never been that lucky and haven’t had any slugs shoot under an inch at 100yds at velocities under something like 880fps. Most of the slugs I tested, regardless of weight, shot best in Slug liner A at between 920-980fps. The Varmint Knocker 32.8 and 34gr. recommended both shoot great at around 965fps. Another thing I didn’t see mentioned was to make sure and try lubing some of the slugs in each of the weights you test. It may or may not affect the accuracy much but it will certainly increase the time between cleanings when using slugs. I have a Superior liner and heard all of these great results with the new FX slugs. I couldn’t get them to shoot as well as everyone was saying they were capable of and was getting pissed. In one of the posts on AGN someone said something about lubing the FX slugs. I always lube my slugs but had forgotten with the FX slugs. When I did lube them, the accuracy increased dramatically. Five shot groups under an inch consistently at 100yds, over and over again. That’s not as easy as everybody makes it sound and after lubing these FX slugs they were crazy accurate, before hand, not at all. It doesn’t happen that way all the time but it can. WIth all the slugs I’ve tested in FX slug A liners, flat or dished base slugs, large hollow points and a long bearing surface were the three things that were most common in the most consistently accurate slugs. Of course there were slugs with a cupped base or shorter bearing surface area or whatever that shot well but day in and day out, these three factors were almost always present in the best shooting slugs. There are a ton of variables in tuning for slugs, how your barrel was prepped, reg. pressure/HS relationship, your particular tune, your particular liner quality, etc... I never discount other people’s results, you just never know. These are just the things I’ve found that either contribute to accuracy with slugs or don’t. I’ve tested AVS, FX, Griffin, NSA, Varmint Knocker, AONCO, Rat Sniper, and others to a lesser degree with both the 600 and 700mm Slug A liner, the Superior liner and even the STX liner before I got a Slug A liner. I hope something I’ve shared here helps at least a little.
One other thing. I haven’t posted any slug tuning info in quite a while but last year and the year before, I used to post my slug result pretty often. If you do a search of my old posts, you should be able to find a lot of useful information on .25 slugs.
Have a good one! Stoti
