Ox108

OK, I'll be a little elitist here and suggest the Benelli Nova. Got one about 5 years ago for around $400 with both the bird and slug barrel. Has been awesome, no missfeeds, missfires, or any other issues. It's built like a tank, it's ugly, and it accepts a recoil dampner (if you need it). Come's apart in about 4 pieces (unlike the Mossberg M500 that we have at work which seems to need a degree in engineering to put back together) and is easy to clean. It's done decent with the sabot's that I put through it and has a couple of deer in the 5 years. Only two shotguns have passed the military's torture test the Mossberg M500 and the Benelli M4. The Army's cheap so they went with the 500, the Marine's the M4.

It seems obvious that the buck had something wrong with it, whether this was a car accident or some form of disease. Sad to see a buck of that magnitude taken down by yote's but looking at the pics it looks like he was gonna go down anyway. Still love shooting them but they're getting a bad rap here, this is what they're supposed to do; take out the sick, lame, and diseased.

I have been using the Hornady SST's for the last two or three years. Great take down power and really does some damage on the inside, but I will have to agree with the issue with a lack of blood trail. The round leaves a very small exit wound, very similar to a rifle round exit wound. The entry and exit seem to be right around the same size. I have center punched two deer this year with them, the first from a tree stand left good blood but I think that was more based on the angle of the shot, also probably because the round sliced the heart in half. the second was from the ground and through I punched out both lungs the blood trailed off after 25m. Found here about 125m away but for about 75m they're was very little blood on the ground until she started stumbling and rubbing on trees. All be told I have not lost a deer with this round even with a few chancy shots. Acts more like a rifle round than a slug, much higher velocity and really able to shoot out to 100m +.