shotgun hunting beginner questions

[lt dan]

i live in a part of s-africa where shotguns and shotgun related hunting plays second fiddle to all the other kinds of hunting and target shooting. i therefore have limited shotgun related experience.

however i was recently exposed to shotguns and related hunting. needless to say i am hooked. so much so that i went out and bought a Beretta A300 semi-auto second hand from a friend.

i must state here that i do have some shotgun background but it is limited to my time in the army where we mostly used shotguns for house penetration and crowd control. so the concept is not new to me. however hunting with them is new.

we have a lot of hunt able birds in my region. birds that are in abundance such as guinea fowl and a lot of water bound birds such as ducks and geese.

i look forward to using my Beretta on birds. in the past ( to be honest since i my school days) i haven't given the hunt able birds in my region a second thought. i always saw them as a pest, letting the wart-hog; baboons; jackal; impala and kudu know of my presence. i have shot a lot of birds just out of sheer annoyance(and not with a shotgun). however i intend to use my shotgun for two more reasons: one to do some clay pigeon shooting and the second and maybe the most important to use the shotgun for a backup gun when we wound wart-hogs, and we we need to track them in thick bush.

i bought the Beretta A300 for $133 from a friend. i have known about this gun for a while and never had any interest in it. that is until recently. my friend never used it and he gave me the original 5 boxes of ammo he got with the gun in the late 1980's. there is 3 rounds of ammo missing from the 5 boxes. to say this gun is spotless is a huge understatement. my friend is not a gun fanatic nor a hunter. this gun has about a 28 inch(maybe 26) barrel that is not choked.

i have red up on slugs as much as i can but strangely enough there is not a lot of technical data (velocity and weight) available on the net.

that is about it for the background on my situation and gun. now for the questions:

1. what is the general thought/experience/views from hunters that have used the Beretta A300?

2. i intend to use this gun regularly for a back up gun. is this wise?

3.if it is indeed wise what kind of gunshot/ammo should i use against hogs on close range?

4. where can i get more info on slugs, for example velocity, grains(bullet weight) and reloading tables? our local reloading manuals have no info on slugs.

thanks in advance.

p.s we have no limits at the moment on ammo with lead, so shooting shotguns are surprisingly cheap.( though i believe this is short lived)

 

[Dragon55]

i bought the Beretta A300 for $133 from a friend.

Wow! I can't get past this.

Lordy, I don't know the exchange rate for US dollar vs SA dollar but it can't be that much.

Anyway, never shot one I have nothing to contribute to help you but I certainly congratulate you your purchase.

 

[lt dan]

Dragon55. dont let the price fool you. at the moment we have some very odd gun laws that comes into play. my friend had two choices: 1 - he could sell or give me the gun or 2- he could hand it in to the local police for destruction.

he wanted to give me the gun but it didn't feel right so i offered him R1000(local currency) that is why the odd amount of $133.

i had to do a two day dedicated hunters course as described in our new laws to be allowed to own this gun as well as going through some other security screening tests. all of which costs a lot of money. to be honest the 2 day course cost almost twice the amount of the Beretta.

oh yeah don't forget i also got 5 boxes of ammo with the deal.

BTW having done this course and a couple of others i suddenly qualified for more guns under the new laws. so instead of people handing in their guns( for destruction) because they didn't do the courses they gave them to me. such as a 10/22T with a bullet compensator Bushnell scope; a authentic ww2 m1 carbine given to a friend of mine's grand father by the US fifth army( with dies and primers); a 9mm sanna a locally produced version of the 9mm Uzi. and not to mention a lot of different ammo.