Remington's new AccuTip is the wildest looking slug on the market. Big Green wanted to enter the plastic-tipped slug market and they decided to get noticed. This slug does that.
The AccuTip has a hard plastic top called the "Power Port Tip" that covers most of the face of the bullet. This tip is bigger and wider than those found on other plastic-tipped slugs. But most noticeable is a series of holes in the ogive, hence the name "Power Port." There are lots of theories as to why the holes are there. One guy told me it made the slug whistle in flight so the deer would hear it and freeze, making them easier to hit. Another ballistic genius is certain they act like the venturi on a carburetor to thin the air so the slug will encounter less resistance and will shoot flatter and hit harder.
The truth, from the Remington engineer who designed the slug, is the opposite: The holes are there to add resistance, called "drag" in ballistic terms. Greg Dennison told me that it's important because of something called "center of pressure"-the point of convergence of all the forces acting on the bullet in flight. Dennison said the relationship between the center of gravity in a bullet and the center of pressure of a bullet in flight is very important to accuracy. The center of gravity is fixed in position by the slug design. So the only variable that can be used to change the relationship between the two is the center of pressure, and of the forces involved, the easiest to manipulate are the drag forces. By adding ports in the tip, Dennison changed the way the air flows over the bullet and added drag. That in turn changed the location of the center of pressure and increased the accuracy of the slug. It also looks pretty cool.
The body of the slug is nearly cylindrical, with almost the entire ogive created by the plastic tip. The jacket is made from cartridge brass rather than copper or gilding metal as is more common, because brass is tougher. Much of the technology for this bullet was developed with Remington Golden Saber handgun ammo, which also uses cartridge brass for a jacket. Also developed with Golden Saber design are the cuts in the front of the jacket to aid expansion; they hold the tip in place and provide a location for the jacket to rupture when initiating expansion.
The base of the slug is rounded in a sort of quasi-boattail, but that is simply an artifact of the manufacturing process rather than providing a ballistic advantage.
The core of the AccuTip slug is pure lead. The jacket and the core are bonded, which prevents separation during expansion and penetration. The average retained weight of five of the .58-caliber, 385-grain slugs recovered from ballistic gelatin was 370.5 grains.
This slug grows very big when it hits something; the average expanded diameter is .97 inch. This large expanded frontal area is typical of bonded-core bullets in general. However, shotgun slugs tend to be much shorter in length compared to diameter than rifle bullets, which can create a problem. It's my opinion that this slug may flatten out too much by over-expanding and almost turning inside-out. This is relatively common with the short, large-diameter, lead-core, jacketed shotgun slugs, and the AccuTip is no exception. The problem is that as it grows too big in diameter it loses too much length. I would prefer to see a slug that expands a bit less and maintains some of its length for better straight-line penetration through flesh. Nonetheless, my hunting party and I killed several deer with the AccuTip.
I recently tested this slug and three others in two different rifled-barrel shotguns: a Remington 870 pump-action equipped with a Nikon 2.5X-10X Monarch scope and a single-shot H&R Ultra Slug Hunter scoped with a Nikon 3X-9X Slughunter with the BDC reticle.The Remington slug came in second in accuracy with five-shot groups. With the H&R, the AccuTip was the most accurate for the best three shots. With the 870 it was a close second for three shots. So there is little doubt the new AccuTip slug is among the most accurate on the market.
Type: 12-gauge shotgun slug w/sabot
Bullet Type: AccuTip bonded-core bullet w/polymer tip
Point: polymer tip
Base: boattail
Core: lead, bonded
Jacket: brass
B.C: .145
Calibers/Weights Available: 12-gauge, 385-grain; 2 3/4"-1850 fps; 3"-1900 fps
MSRP Per Box of 10 Cartridges: $25
