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If you are using your shotgun for self-defense you do not want slugs. Buckshot will stop an assailant faster & it doesn't travel through as many walls so innocent bystanders are safer.
Good luck!
Shooting slugs seems like a lot of work. Slug and snail bait is cheap and works just fine without putting holes all over the yard.
I'll respectfully disagree with Buano. I've printed several 3.5 inch groups with Sellier and Bellot rifled slugs out of a smoothbore 18" gun (cylinder bore, which is another way to say fixed no choke). The difference between shooting rifled slugs out of a smoothbore, and sabots out of a rifled barrel, in my experience, is several inches. A shotgun will never be sub MOA but you can reliably put one in the kill zone on a deer at 100 yards with either, and both will stop an man at a longer range than that. Though on that count I absolutely agree with him. Shot is a MUCH better choice.
To stir the pot further, you can also buy rifled choke tubes for most smoothbore systems. This gives only slightly higher performance than the smoothbore/rifled slug combo, but is an option.
I also feel I should mention cost. Sabot slugs are generally between 2 and 4 times the cost of similarly weighted rifled slugs, thoguh they do have much higher ballistic coefficients and shoot flatter tighter groups.
Personally I've shot both. Hunted with both (From Michigan which prohibits rifle hunting in zone 3),and I shoot rifled slugs. I can reliably make hits out to 150 yard with good slugs, and past that, do I really need to be shooting at it?
PS: Just occured to me. I could see getting a 12" group at 100 yards if you were shooting a sabot slug down a smoothbore barrel. Slugs designed for smoothbores have rifling pressed into the lead that makes them spin. Sabots have no such thing, and would just slide down the bore REALLY fast.