Consensus on Shot through Rifled Barrel?

[crya79]

Greetings,
I need your experienced input. I'm curious as to whether anyone has any knowledge of any negative effects on performance of firing regular shot of any kind down a rifled shotgun barrel? I've read the rifling distorts the shot pattern. As I'd be likely firing more shot than slugs, wouldn't a smooth bore make more sense? Any feelings one way or the other? This is in the context of Multi-Gun use...

Thanks for the advice.

[bjl333]

The rifling will spread the shot out to a very big pattern, you will not get anything useful past 10-15 yards. The pellets will still be flying, but everywhere!! It will not harm the barrel tho ...

[gose]

Like stated above, rifled barrels are the sucks for 3-gun.
With all the good slugs available today I barely see the need for a rifled barrel even if you only shoot slugs...
Sitting with a bag, my 21" M2 shoots 4-5" 5-shot groups at 100y, which is more than enough for anything I'll encounter in 3-gun matches.

[crya79]

This pretty much confirms what I've been reading. Case closed.

[Ike Arumba]

I noticed that the Remington catalog states that a couple of types of slug are meant for rifled barrels or rifled chokes. Are there really rifled chokes? There must be, I guess. It sounds like you can have your cake and eat it too, if a rifled choke can be screwed on and off. It does make me wonder, though, about the slug engaging the rifling at muzzle velocity.

[PEBKAC]

Imagine the shot spreading out like a really really wide doughnut. Like, really wide. Like can't consistently hit anything with all the shot out past point blank wide...

Don't do it, terrible idea.

Also the amount of time you will spend removing the wadding and shot-cup refuse from the rifling....ugh my friend did this once and we worked on that thing for half an hour with a boresnake and solvent. Still couldn't get all the plastic bits out.

Rifled chokes do exist however sometimes they aren't called that. I've seen them called "diffusion chokes" as well.