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You have to be really really careful buying "Mossberg 590"'s. Moss. catalogs or has cataloged a bunch of different variants....with and without ghost rings, different barrel lengths, different mag tube lengths, heat shields, heavy barrels, bayonet lugs, steel safety and trigger guards vs plastic, and I believe double op-arms vs single.
You pretty much need to decide the features you want, surf their catalog for an exact model number, then order that exact model in from your gun dealer. That's what I had to do to get what I wanted. I got the full Millspec 590A1....20 inch, ghost rings, 8+1, heavy barrel, bayonet lug, double rods. If I ever get serious about this sport I'll have to have the 590's barrel threaded for chokes. Once or twice the cylinder bore wasnt tight enough to drop a hardset steel.
For the loading style I do, I think the 500/590 is superior to the 870 because of the loading gate. In the mossberg the loading gate us tucked up into the receiver when the slide is forward, in the 870 its sprung down. As Plink noted, I take advantage of this by rolling the gun over onto my shoulder so the gate is up. I can then drop a shell into what amounts to a shell sized box, and they push that shell in with the nose of a second shell getting two shells in with 1 push. I can hold 4 shells in my hands, so it becomes a drop one, push 2, drop 1, push two routine from a single trip to a belt mounted 4 shell carrier. _In practice_, if I've been doing my homework I can pull off a shoot, load 4, shoot, in 5'ish...once in a while. But the shotgun loading is the most perishable skill in the tool box imho. You have to practice it a lot, regularly, to have a prayer of pulling if off consistently and quickly under match conditions. That's really the sad thing about the SG end of the game is that too often a competition to see who can reload fast and avoid trainwrecking themselves.
I think the mossberg style slide release is also in a better location than the 870. Mosse's is on the rear of the trigger guard vs the front for the 870. The Moss release falls naturally under your second finger, while most people have to reach forward with their trigger finger to get the 870's latch. Small time savings perhaps, but there none the less.
I wouldn't campaign a 3-gun shotgun without ghost rings, although I see that some people can make it happen. I just really like knowing where my stuff is going. I shot a slug stage one time with lots of tight shots around no-shoots and the guys with bead sights were crying a blue streak and chalking up the -10's. The GR shooters were like "yeah, its a little tight but doable...whatever".
The other thing to consider wrt to sights is this. IF (big if) you grant that a bead is faster than a GR issues of proficiency being equal, and you grant that a GR is more sure than a bead. You're trading off the a slight bit of slowness on most of the shots in the COF (not "every shot" because if you're trying to take a head at 25 yards with a bead a GR might actually be faster) against the time saved by not having to shoot an extra. Lets say the time to recognize the need and take an extra shot with a shotgun is 0.5 seconds....over lets say a 24 round COF. That means the bead would have to save you 0.02 seconds per shot to help you break even from your extra...which perhaps it does. But if you're playing the limited shotgun game right, you're not going to ever intentionally load an extra round. So you need to add in the cost of loading the extra which is a full second if you're a pro who's loading 4 at a time, 1.5 seconds if you're a reasonably practiced amateur loading 4 at a time. And probably 2 full seconds for a single-shell emergency whoopsie, I missed or I counted wrong one-more reload. So now you're looking at having to save something on the order 0.06sec. to 0.10 seconds on EVERY shot with the bead to out time the GR. I'm not sure beads are that much faster. If you add on the time cost of a no-shoot or a miss due to the lower precision of the bead, the necessary time savings gets even more absurd. So if you shoot perfectly on an easy stage maybe the bead saves you half a second. Guess what, unless you make your living shooting, you've probably got a half second of fat in your reload you could trim. And that you would take with you to every reload on every stage.
Also, FWIW, you dont need to put on a barrel out to the length of the 8+1 tube. The tube can be longer than the barrel by a couple inches without ill effect.
You pretty much need to decide the features you want, surf their catalog for an exact model number, then order that exact model in from your gun dealer. That's what I had to do to get what I wanted. I got the full Millspec 590A1....20 inch, ghost rings, 8+1, heavy barrel, bayonet lug, double rods. If I ever get serious about this sport I'll have to have the 590's barrel threaded for chokes. Once or twice the cylinder bore wasnt tight enough to drop a hardset steel.
For the loading style I do, I think the 500/590 is superior to the 870 because of the loading gate. In the mossberg the loading gate us tucked up into the receiver when the slide is forward, in the 870 its sprung down. As Plink noted, I take advantage of this by rolling the gun over onto my shoulder so the gate is up. I can then drop a shell into what amounts to a shell sized box, and they push that shell in with the nose of a second shell getting two shells in with 1 push. I can hold 4 shells in my hands, so it becomes a drop one, push 2, drop 1, push two routine from a single trip to a belt mounted 4 shell carrier. _In practice_, if I've been doing my homework I can pull off a shoot, load 4, shoot, in 5'ish...once in a while. But the shotgun loading is the most perishable skill in the tool box imho. You have to practice it a lot, regularly, to have a prayer of pulling if off consistently and quickly under match conditions. That's really the sad thing about the SG end of the game is that too often a competition to see who can reload fast and avoid trainwrecking themselves.
I think the mossberg style slide release is also in a better location than the 870. Mosse's is on the rear of the trigger guard vs the front for the 870. The Moss release falls naturally under your second finger, while most people have to reach forward with their trigger finger to get the 870's latch. Small time savings perhaps, but there none the less.
I wouldn't campaign a 3-gun shotgun without ghost rings, although I see that some people can make it happen. I just really like knowing where my stuff is going. I shot a slug stage one time with lots of tight shots around no-shoots and the guys with bead sights were crying a blue streak and chalking up the -10's. The GR shooters were like "yeah, its a little tight but doable...whatever".
The other thing to consider wrt to sights is this. IF (big if) you grant that a bead is faster than a GR issues of proficiency being equal, and you grant that a GR is more sure than a bead. You're trading off the a slight bit of slowness on most of the shots in the COF (not "every shot" because if you're trying to take a head at 25 yards with a bead a GR might actually be faster) against the time saved by not having to shoot an extra. Lets say the time to recognize the need and take an extra shot with a shotgun is 0.5 seconds....over lets say a 24 round COF. That means the bead would have to save you 0.02 seconds per shot to help you break even from your extra...which perhaps it does. But if you're playing the limited shotgun game right, you're not going to ever intentionally load an extra round. So you need to add in the cost of loading the extra which is a full second if you're a pro who's loading 4 at a time, 1.5 seconds if you're a reasonably practiced amateur loading 4 at a time. And probably 2 full seconds for a single-shell emergency whoopsie, I missed or I counted wrong one-more reload. So now you're looking at having to save something on the order 0.06sec. to 0.10 seconds on EVERY shot with the bead to out time the GR. I'm not sure beads are that much faster. If you add on the time cost of a no-shoot or a miss due to the lower precision of the bead, the necessary time savings gets even more absurd. So if you shoot perfectly on an easy stage maybe the bead saves you half a second. Guess what, unless you make your living shooting, you've probably got a half second of fat in your reload you could trim. And that you would take with you to every reload on every stage.
Also, FWIW, you dont need to put on a barrel out to the length of the 8+1 tube. The tube can be longer than the barrel by a couple inches without ill effect.
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