Federal's New Take on Deer Hunting Shotgun Sabot

Federal Premium's Freight Train Copper Sabot slug offers deer hunters using slug guns a potent new option that rivals some straight-walled cartridges.

September 26, 2025 By Richard Mann

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During the past half century, the most important advancements in the rifle world—at least for hunters—have been with ammunition. The terminal performance and flight characteristics of bullets have drastically improved, as has the quality of factory ammo, including the introduction of several very good cartridges. But some noted innovations have occurred with shotgun ammo, too. For example, new TSS loads are allowing hunters to effectively kill turkeys with sub-gauge shotguns, and at impressive distances. Amidst all this, we also sometimes overlook shotgun slugs, but today’s options are a far cry from what we once used. Federal Premium’s new Freight Train Copper Sabot Slug is a perfect example.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

My father had a 16-gauge Winchester Model 12 shotgun he used for squirrels, grouse, rabbits, turkeys and even deer. He did this not because rifles were illegal for deer hunting in West Virginia, but because the Model 12 was the only deer-capable gun he had. In those days, when you hunted deer with a shotgun, you used what we called “punken-balls.” These punken-balls, or pumpkin balls, (aka Foster slugs) were large chunks of lead with rifling grooves around their circumference to—supposedly—help them spin for stabilization. These grooves really only helped the slug conform to the bore/choke of the shotgun.

If you whacked a deer with one, they were deadly. However, they were not very accurate, and they had a trajectory about like throwing a pumpkin, hence their name. The hard part wasn’t killing the deer. It was getting a hit.

With the advent of the BRI sabot slug and the availability of aftermarket rifled shotgun barrels, we entered a new era of deer hunting with shotguns. Not only could ammo manufacturers construct more aerodynamic slugs housed in a plastic sabot to engage the barrel’s rifling for spin stabilization, but they could also engineer these modern slugs to provide much improved terminal performance. The allowance of straight-walled cartridges for deer hunting in previously shotgun-only locations has reduced the appeal of slug guns, but many hunters still use them. What Federal has done for those hunters is maximize the efficiency and performance of the sabot slug.

BUILDING BETTER

To learn more about this new slug load, I talked with Adam Moser, Federal’s director of product engineering. He says that over the past few years, Federal has worked diligently to isolate the key variables that affect sabot slugs and their accuracy.

“In doing so, we have identified critical to quality dimensions and features on the polymer sabot and wadding systems,” Moser says. “Identifying these critical dimensions and features has allowed us to design the components and loads in such a way that we are able to harness the most out of the system’s potential.”

During the re-design of the copper slug for Freight Train, Moser adds that they strove to improve penetration depth over Federal’s current Trophy Copper slugs.

“To achieve more penetration, we focused on decreasing the expanded diameter of the upset projectile, while not sacrificing the weight retention of these monolithic slugs,” he says. “By optimizing the hollow point geometry, skive depth and petal thickness, we have been able to reduce the expanded diameters and achieve an average of 30 percent more penetration across distances tested.”

To better understand this, let’s look at exactly what the Freight Train slug is. The Freight Train slug is a monolithic copper bullet with a hollow point that’s filled with a pointed polymer tip. The bullet has external skiving to optimize bullet upset and to maximize terminal performance without sacrificing penetration.

For the 12-gauge loads, the sabot-encased bullet is 0.50 caliber, and it weighs 300 grains. It has a ballistic coefficient (BC) of 0.187. The 20-gauge Freight Train load uses the same caliber bullet, but it weighs 275 grains and has a BC of 0.171. The 3-inch 12-gauge load should have a muzzle velocity of about 2,000 fps with around 2,664 foot-pounds of muzzle energy. The 3-inch 20-gauge load runs at about 1,900 fps with 2,204 foot-pounds of muzzle energy. The 2 3/4-inch 12- and 20-gauge loads run at 1,900 fps and 1,700 fps, respectively.

To put all this in perspective, let’s compare these Freight Train loads to a straight-wall cartridge like the .45-70 Government loaded with a Barnes VOR-TX 300-grain TSX bullet. With a muzzle velocity of around 1,925 fps, this rifle load generates about 2,469 foot-pounds of muzzle energy. But the bullet only has a BC of 0.163. This means the 3-inch, 12-gauge Freight Train load hits harder and will fly flatter. The other Freight Train loads will perform very similar to the .45-70 load. Not only is this great for deer hunters, but it makes the Freight Train loads appealing for bear or elk hunters, too.

Beyond the raw ballistics of the new Freight Train load, Moser also notes that repeatability is another driving factor in the performance of these rounds.

“Federal has industry-leading primer technology, which allows us to ignite these high-performance rounds with consistency for every shot,” he says. “To aid in this consistency, we only select propellants that give us ballistic stability across a wide range of environmental conditions. In short, this means if our customers are sighting their slug guns in during the heat of the summer or targeting big game in subzero temps, they can expect the same performance out of our ammo.”

A BRIGHT FUTURE

It’s no secret that ammo companies like Federal have brilliant engineers working under their roofs. After all, these same smart folks recently gave us the 7mm Backcountry, in my opinion the most modern centerfire rifle cartridge ever created. Fortunately for slug gun hunters, while all this centerfire rifle cartridge development was going on, some other clever individuals were working to maximize the performance of the slug gun. The result is a lead-free shotgun slug that shoots within two minutes of angle and that outperforms most .45-70 Government loads.

As with modern centerfire rifle cartridges and the bullets manufactured for them, ammo companies are continuing to evolve shotgun ammunition. Recent regulation changes allowing straight-walled cartridges may have cut into the appeal of deer hunting with shotgun slugs, but as shotgun ammunition technology progresses, the performance differences between the two will only continue to narrow.