lee slug mold loads

[timmo58]

 have the mold ,and lots of wheel weights 300 pounds of em , wanna make some deer slugs out of  ( AA shotshell,blue duster  wads and red dot powder) the loads listed dont include red dot so i guess i have to buy what they use dont see why red dot isnt included its an 1 oz slug load ,dont dare just sub the shot for slug and use shot shell loads for the deer slug any recomendaitons  besides get out my money and buy powder have a mec mark 5 press

[jgalar]

I bought one of the molds planning to shoot it out of a smoothbore rifle sited gun using WW lead. I wasn't expecting much in the way of accuracy and didn't/don't plan on using it for hunting. The plan was for a short range bear/mountain lion protection load. Since I live in the Fort Worth Tx area and there are no bears or mountain lions here except in the zoo I had no reason to make up the loads other than I was bored.

Using the Herco and loads of 34, 35, and 36 grains I made a bunch of loads to try out. 36 is the max so I only made a few. On a large piece of paper I drew a picture of ManBearPig (a Southpark spoof of Al Gore and Global Warming) and roughly sighted in at around 20 yds. I handed the gun to the kids and let them blast away at the dreaded ManBearPig. After my kids burned up almost all my loads I paced off about 70 yds and put ManBearPig up to see if I could even keep the shoots on paper. Using mixed loads of 34-36 grains I got around a 12" group.

So I wasn't really taking load development seriously, but I believe if you use the Herco and develop a load with rifled barrel it would work well for hunting.

[coyotejoe]

I have used Red Dot in slug loads. The reason it is not listed is because they want to duplicate the factory slug velocities of 1600 fps and you can't do that with Red Dot. You can load slugs from birdshot data if you are willing to accept birdshot velocities of 1100-1200 fps. Since accuracy limits my range to about 50 yards I feel 1100 fps is plenty with about half the recoil of a factory slug load. That is my only reason to reload slugs, because the factory 12 and 16 gauge loads in my light shotguns kick the snot out of me, even 20's are no fun in my six pound bird gun.