I shot Rem 870s for 30 + years. A few years back I bought a Mossberg 500, and I have to admit, the controls are placed much better and easier to acquire.
I am a lefty, and I switched the safety over to a Fortmann left hand safety on all my Remingtons, 552, 870 and 1100.
But the Mossberg top tang safety, and slide release closer to the trigger finger make sense. The Mossberg comes with more chokes and a dual extractor, (although the single extractor on an 870 never let me down).
My current quail/defense gun combo is not a pump though, it is an older 1100 that I shortened and had re-threaded for chokes.
It has a +3 Choate extension and a Meprolight tritium white front bead.
Like RpG suggested, if you can buy an older pump like a Winchester Model 12, you can have it shortened a bit if you don't like a 28" or 30" fixed choke barrel, and there are several places that can thread it for chokes cheaply.
I had Bob day of Americhoke in So Cal do mine, it was about $140 for shortening, facing, threading and D&T for the new bead.
There is a guy in New England named Mike Orlen that is highly recommended that only charges around $40 to thread a barrel, and he does the other stuff too.
One thing I wish I'd have spent the extra money on is having the forcing cone ahead of the chamber polished and lengthened. They change the angle to a more gentle one and polish the cone.
That causes less wad deformation and gives better patterns, also the plastic wads don't gum up the barrel as bad.
When I clean my barrel there is a lot of plastic wad junk just ahead of the chamber to remove.
I am a lefty, and I switched the safety over to a Fortmann left hand safety on all my Remingtons, 552, 870 and 1100.
But the Mossberg top tang safety, and slide release closer to the trigger finger make sense. The Mossberg comes with more chokes and a dual extractor, (although the single extractor on an 870 never let me down).
My current quail/defense gun combo is not a pump though, it is an older 1100 that I shortened and had re-threaded for chokes.
It has a +3 Choate extension and a Meprolight tritium white front bead.
Like RpG suggested, if you can buy an older pump like a Winchester Model 12, you can have it shortened a bit if you don't like a 28" or 30" fixed choke barrel, and there are several places that can thread it for chokes cheaply.
I had Bob day of Americhoke in So Cal do mine, it was about $140 for shortening, facing, threading and D&T for the new bead.
There is a guy in New England named Mike Orlen that is highly recommended that only charges around $40 to thread a barrel, and he does the other stuff too.
One thing I wish I'd have spent the extra money on is having the forcing cone ahead of the chamber polished and lengthened. They change the angle to a more gentle one and polish the cone.
That causes less wad deformation and gives better patterns, also the plastic wads don't gum up the barrel as bad.
When I clean my barrel there is a lot of plastic wad junk just ahead of the chamber to remove.
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