Is there that much difference?
I found a really nice Rem 1100 that is 2 & 3/4 only.
What would I need 3" chambering for?
I do not hunt goose.
I may use it for turkey or duck.
Will definitely use it for deer with both slugs & buckshot.
It comes with a 30" full barrel and a 20" rifle-sight imp cyl barrel.
Is there that much difference between the 2 & 3/4 and 3"?
What do you gain by going to the 3" ammo?
All comments are appreciated.

Only difference is in recoil and speed.

My Dad, My grandpa, and I have all been shooting 1100 12ga in 2 3/4's for ducks ever since we have been hunting them. Everyone in the deer club back home (running dogs with buckshot) uses 2 3/4 1100s. Reason being is that the 2 3/4" shells are faster (especially with buckshot). When you take a MAX dram load, thats a MAX load. Its simple physics, if you take 18 pellets vs 9 pellets of buckshot, and put the same amount of ummmpphh behind them, which load will be faster? The nine pellet load of course. With deer, this seems to be pretty important. 3 1/2" buckshot has not impressed me at all.

They only game where I think a 3 1/2 gives you an advantage is with turkey hunting, and thats simply because you are shooting for the head (basically a walnut on a slurpee straw). More pellets is more better.

With ducks, I don't see any real difference except that 3 1/2s cost more, kick more and are louder.

2 3/4" shells shoot better patterns that the other two. If you ever shoot slugs, the 2 3/4" is also more accurate with slugs. I have hunted with 2 3/4" shells all my life and see no need for changing. They will kill anything I need them to. 2 3/4" is also plenty for turkey. My turkey gun, using 2 3/4" shells and an extra full choke tube will put about 55 shot in the head and neck of a turkey target at 50 yards. More than enough.

I'm feeling better about the 2 & 3/4" already.
Is $290 a fair price for the 1100 with 2 barrels in 90-95% condition?
The gentleman that owned it cared well for his guns and it's in nice shape.
If I used the 20" slug barrel will it pattern buckshot or would it be a "slugs-only" option. It's a smoothbore.

I sold an 1100 at a gun show a few months back, 2-3/4 30 inch full choke barrel, 85 percent $300.00. It sounds like a good buy to me.

I was just going to gripe on this line of BS too. I used to think thowing more shot, the better and I proved myself wrong.

With pattern testing, you will find a "sweet load" for your particular gun. For wing shooting, what I have found is what most would consider "light for gauge" loads will often perform far better than "normal" or "heavy" loads will.

Take the 12ga for instance. Normal loads are 1.125 - 1.250 oz., 1 oz. somewhat common but not largely accepted. The expensive hunting loads, 1.375 - 1.750 oz are accepted. Now, when you do some looking, you'll find the lighter loads generally come in #8 or #7.5 shot. With these, the thinking is the smaller the shot, the more pellets thus the better the load will perform....horse pucky! 1 oz. loads with #6 or #5 shot will work very well and if you really want to get good patterns, duplex your shot sizes.

I made a boo boo one day, not paying attention and dumped about 5 pounds of #4's into the #6 bag which had about 3 pounds of shot in it. Thinking I buggered up, I decided to toss it all in with the culled shot from broken hulls, spills , ect. What I ended up with is a mix of everything from #9's up to #2's. I knew I was going to shoot several hunter's clay's courses so I figured why not use up all the oddball stuff I have instead of tossing it. Used a few bags of the "wrong" wads I bought at an auction and ended up loading several boxes of 12ga with 15/16 oz. loads of this mixture of shot sizes. Days later, off to the first shoot I went. Got some snickers and rude comments when I didn't show up with my "special sporting clays gun" and $200 shooting vest. The old 311 double and a well worn surplus faded OD green ruck sack complimented by my tinted safety glasses.

Well, the laughter subsided quickly on the first station when I whacked the first single and the two following doubles including two rabbits with nothing but powder left on all the clays. I smoked four more birds on station 2 and five on station 3 before one of them broke the silence as asked, "what the heck are you shooting?" When I handed him one and told him what they were, the looks I got from the other four shooters were priceless. The round finished with my score being a 23 and the "special gun, special load" shooters were 20-22.

Now, you can jack up loads in a 2.75" hull to 1.5 oz. easily and if you change to paper wads, you can stuff a 1.75 oz. load in them but once you get over 1.5 oz, the patterns start to decline on stationary targets. Turkey load I came up with that gave the most consistent patterns was a 1.375 oz. shot charge consisting of a 50/50 mixture of #6 & #4 buffered with corn meal over a less than max charge of Blue Dot. Max powder charges will most often cause patterns to open up too quickly, give up a little speed and go for a tighter pattern on a stationary target. Wing shooting, go with a lighter shot charge and up your shot size and you'll get much better patterning on moving targets.

Why this works is that the bigger pellets carry more energy which means it takes less of them to make an efficient kill and you shorten up your shot string considerably thus putting more pellets on target rather than slinging a big long line of shot where most of it misses the target completely because it's lagging behind.

On the duplex loads, the smaller pellets act like a buffer for the bigger pellets and the result is the total pattern is held much tighter. If you want spreader loads, don't mix your shot but rather put half the charge weight of the larger shot in the hull first then the second half the charge of the smaller shot on top of it. What happens is the larger shot will push it's way past the smaller shot within the first few yards of travel. This gives you a much wider pattern at closer ranges w/o having to use a different choke. Back when there was enough grouse to hunt, I used a 7/8 oz total load, half of it being #5 shot and the other half being #8. The effect was to give me a 25 yard pattern from the modified choke barrel about the same as a cylinder bore would produce. On the full choke guns, 30 yard patter was about the same as improved cylinder. The smaller shot opens up like a doughnut shap and the bigger shot remains fairly constant in the center with only about 5% of them becoming fliers.

Hay mark that was really interesting. I'm not much of a shotgun shooter. Did a little skeet shooting in the Army, but bird shooting was never my thing.

A couple of years ago a friend whom is a turkey hunter talked me into going. Got one of the Remington 3.5 inch 870 Specials. Plastic stocks and light gun just beat me to death with those 3.5 inch turkey loads. Not only that but that finish on the Remington specials would rust if you left it in a bucket of oil.

Last year I sold it and got an 835 Mossberg ported gun like my friend uses. Much easier to shoot with the 2 oz loads.

Anyway back to your post I do reload for both the 12 and 20 gauge and will try some of the loads you recommend. Thanks for the advice.

Hay mark that was really interesting. I'm not much of a shotgun shooter. Did a little skeet shooting in the Army, but bird shooting was never my thing.

A couple of years ago a friend whom is a turkey hunter talked me into going. Got one of the Remington 3.5 inch 870 Specials. Plastic stocks and light gun just beat me to death with those 3.5 inch turkey loads. Not only that but that finish on the Remington specials would rust if you left it in a bucket of oil.

Last year I sold it and got an 835 Mossberg ported gun like my friend uses. Much easier to shoot with the 2 oz loads.

Anyway back to your post I do reload for both the 12 and 20 gauge and will try some of the loads you recommend. Thanks for the advice.


Thats the same gun I am shooting for turkeys faucett. Only mine has a 20" non ported barrel. Kicks like a branded mule! But, the gun is short and light, which is great for run and gun turkey hunting. My Dad still uses his 1100. He switched from a fixed modified to a barrel he had briley thin walls put in and shoots a full choke, Lord knows he has worn out some birds with that thing. I'm using Winchester Elite 3.5"s with 2 oz of #6 shot. Its their new super heavy load. Just patterned the best out of that gun. I need to get my other choke tube for it back from my Dad who borrowed it for a hunt up in VA. That tube shoots hevishot like a rifle!

I've still got some 3" federals with 2 ounces of #4 shot in them. Kick like a mule from the Moss 500 and ain't worth a crap for wing shooting. Went on a pheasant hunt with one of my customers in south central PA. All wild birds and they tend to get a whole lotta speed going especially with a tail wind like we had that day. I loaded up with the Federal's on his suggestion and we hit the fields. I shot at least 10 birds, him about 15 and we never touched any of them at all, all the shots were well behind despite my going with leads of 3' or better. We returned to the truck for lunch and I changed out my 2oz loads for my normal 1 oz loads of 4/6 duplex. Next rooster that came up he fired 3 rounds at and never touched it, it was about 45 yds away when it came into my fire zone, took an 8" or so lead and he folded up and came down in a pile on the ground. No more than ten minutes later, I dumped another one in a similar manner also around 40 yds out and moving like he had JATO rockets on him. My hunting partner then decided to give some of my ammo a try... half hour later we were headed back to the truck as he had his limit too.

Back to the turkey thing, big payloads of shot don't always produce consistent patterns. What I found with loads over 1.375 oz. in the 12ga is that your patterns will tend to "walk". By this I mean the bulk of the pellets will tend to stay within a given size circle but the concentration of pellets at any given point in that circle will vary with each shot.

Great info guys!
Let's keep this thread going.

markkw
I agree with you in the 12ga 2 3/4' shells are the best- I've reloaded for many years and patterned many shells and the 1- 1 1/4 oz 2 3/4's all ways patterned better then the 3" shells. My favorite skeet /trap load for the 12ga was 7/8 oz of 7 1/2's. I've also noticed that in 20 ga the 2 3/4 ' pattern better then 3" shell's with 7/8-1 oz loads!

I should have said, you can do a lot with the powder & wad combinations to throw heavier loads but these are only effective against stationary targets. Problem is, these custom built loads will often play havoc with a semi-auto because they require extremely slow burning powders which often lead to action functioning problems. On manual guns they work fine but most companies omit such loading data because of its limited application and because slight variations in loading can produce excessive pressures. I don't know about current times but some powder mfg's would supply specialty load data on an as-requested basis.

On wing shooting, you're far better off having a fast light load w/ a short string then a long string heavy load because you'll easily loose 50%+ of the shot load to lag anyway.

Easy way to prove this is to put up two or three pattern boards side by side, best is two sheets of plywood placed 4' end to 4' end completely covered with paper. Put an aiming dot in the middle of the two sheets and swing either L-R or R-L and without stopping the swing, fire when the sight passes the aim point dot.

Since only the gun is moving, the results will be reversed so the amount of shot lagging the target will actually print forward of the aim point. Thus, if you swing L-R, all the shot printed to the right of the aim point will have actually trailed/lagged behind a moving target. Lighter loads have more velocity and despite having the lower pellet count, you will find that they put more pellets on target than a heavy load will.

I am a firm believer in duplex shot loading too. 50/50 mix of #4 & #6 or #5 & #7.5 or #6 & #8 have proven time and again to be the winning combo's. Just pulled a box out yesterday, upland loads for my 20ga are 13/16oz of #4 & #6 duplex over 15.0gr Green Dot using a WAA20 wad. I used these for everything from doves to ducks back when lead shot was still legal.

One word of FYI, check your actual shot weight as it drops. Different size shot will throw differing weights from a drop bar. If using a fixed or bushing type bar, you may have to adjust the hole to get the exact weight you want. On most types I have found it best to taper the inlet side of the bar/bushing some to get more consistent results and reduce the hangs & jams. A little fine tuning on the machine side sometimes make a whole lot of difference in the consistency of the finished product.

Back to the turkey thing, big payloads of shot don't always produce consistent patterns. What I found with loads over 1.375 oz. in the 12ga is that your patterns will tend to "walk". By this I mean the bulk of the pellets will tend to stay within a given size circle but the concentration of pellets at any given point in that circle will vary with each shot.

Totally agree with you there Mark. I was lucky enough to find a load my 835 liked very well. It just happened to be a 3.5" load. All things being equal, I will take more pellets for turkey hunting. But this is the only game for which I see that a 3.5" has ANY advantage at all, and thats only if your 3.5" gun likes them.

As it turns out, that Win Elite load is the only 3.5" my 835 likes. The next best load was a 3" Win Supreme, again with 2oz of #6s. Same amount of pellets, but in a 3". This was the load I always shot out of my 870. I killed a lot of turkeys with it.

If the price of tungsten goes up much more, I am going to go back to that 3" lead load, since 10 can be had for about $10. I don't mind spending $35 for 10 shells of the tungsten Win Elite, but if it goes up over $40, I'll draw the line. The 3.5"s aren't $35 better than those 3" lead #6s.

As it turns out, that Win Elite load is the only 3.5" my 835 likes. The next best load was a 3" Win Supreme, again with 2oz of #6s. Same amount of pellets, but in a 3". This was the load I always shot out of my 870. I killed a lot of turkeys with it.

Getting ready for turkey two years ago my neighbor discovered the same thing, the 3" did better all of the time.

Is there that much difference?
I found a really nice Rem 1100 that is 2 & 3/4 only.
What would I need 3" chambering for?
I do not hunt goose.
I may use it for turkey or duck.
Will definitely use it for deer with both slugs & buckshot.
It comes with a 30" full barrel and a 20" rifle-sight imp cyl barrel.
Is there that much difference between the 2 & 3/4 and 3"?
What do you gain by going to the 3" ammo?
All comments are appreciated.
I am no expert on shotgunning, but on a few goose hunting trips, it was recommended by our guide to use 3.5" FF shot during the unlimited white goose season. Steel shot just wounds birds and I hate to see that. Out of 100 geese shot, maybe 15-20 would keep flying, only to drop out of the sky about 200 yards away. Some are never found. One guy was using 2 3/4" steel shells and was really having trouble downing any birds. Everyone else was using 3.5"

I think using Heavy Shot or some of the newer stuff, 2 3/4" would be fine but it is expensive., Of the few hunts that I've been on, steel shot seems to need as much powder as possible to keep it in the air.
I just read that you do not hunt geese so with that in mind, buy the shotgun!

I am no expert on shotgunning, but on a few goose hunting trips, it was recommended by our guide to use 3.5" FF shot during the unlimited white goose season. Steel shot just wounds birds and I hate to see that. Out of 100 geese shot, maybe 15-20 would keep flying, only to drop out of the sky about 200 yards away. Some are never found. One guy was using 2 3/4" steel shells and was really having trouble downing any birds. Everyone else was using 3.5"

I think using Heavy Shot or some of the newer stuff, 2 3/4" would be fine but it is expensive., Of the few hunts that I've been on, steel shot seems to need as much powder as possible to keep it in the air.
I just read that you do not hunt geese so with that in mind, buy the shotgun!

It's already on layaway!
Thanks for all the replies.

TPV
I agree that on goose atleast a 3" should be used! You need the extra payload! But on everything up to turkey 2 3/4" will work just fine!
All my turkey loads of 1 1/4-1 1/2 oz in 2/34" shell always produced tighter patterns then my 3" loads!
No matter what the distance was out to 40 yds! Granted the 3" shell allows shots out to 50 yds but I would not shoot that far ! So I always loaded 2 3/4" shells!