I'm not really shotgun people but...

I had so much fun at the first Crimson Trace Midnight 3 Gun match shooting Iain Harrison's FN SLP that when I ran across a New-Old-Stock Remington 870 smoothbore slug gun earlier this year for a reasonable price, I snatched it up.

Once I got the bugs ironed out (or filed off, as the case may be) I had a tremendous amount of fun running it at this year's match, too. I had forgotten just how... kinesthesiologically satisfying it is to run a pump gauge at speed. Boom! shalakalak Boom!

See the shells in the sidesaddle there? I'm doing it wrong.

 Love the Magpul stock, and I say that as someone who, when she first saw the Magpul shotgun furniture, thought "Okay, the guys at Magpul have jumped the shark now, because that looks flimsy and ghey." Despite my treatment of the 870 which, like most of my guns intended as range toys and sporting goods rather than collectibles, varies between neglect and mild abuse, nothing on the stock has broken or fallen off yet.

Surprisingly, I haven't injured myself with the (optional) rear sling loop. If a klutz like me didn't hurt herself, it's probably safe for normal people.

One of the advantages of a pistol grip on a shotgun is that it allows people without superhuman forearm strength to hold the gauge comfortable shouldered with one hand. Unfortunately, the downsides are that it pokes out awkwardly when the weapon is slung, makes operating the 870 safety a pain, and some don't like what it does to the handling of the gun. The Magpul stock gives the advantage of the pistol grip, in that even my wimpy wrist can keep the shotgun shouldered with just my strong hand, and hasn't any of the disadvantages. (Well, maybe it wouldn't handle as well as an English stock if I took this thing hunting for upland birds...)

The Mesa sidesaddle holds the shells with a death grip. Now that it's a little worn in, you no longer need to beat the rounds in with a rubber mallet*, but they're still awful snug. Even given how tight it holds them, though, you probably want to keep the shells brass-up; even the mild recoil of low-brass bird shot was causing reloads in the side-saddle to "walk" downward, so why tempt gravity?

In the lighting department, my experimenting has left me convinced that the SureFire forend is the industry standard for a reason. If you want a light on your gauge, this is probably the way to go unless you have a technique- or situation-specific reason to use something else.

I have a Magpul forward sling attachment doohickey en route, and that will probably finish the shotgun project from the hardware side of things for the foreseeable future.

Whether or not I install ghost rings and/or a red dot remains an open question. I haven't had any real difficulty with the factory rifle sights, but then I haven't had any really challenging shooting problems with it yet. We'll see.

When it comes to shotguns, I can't recommend this thread at p-f.com highly enough. There's more hands-on, real-world experience with running a gauge in those five pages than there is in some whole fora. It should be stickied, if not made into an e-book.


*Only moderate exaggeration.