I understand what Bighoss is saying
but while the length of the barrel may not have any balistics impact on how a gun performs - the light weight, and short barrel affect how fast the gun swings / the sight plane - and both may cause you to "whip" the barrel as opposed to "swing" the gun in a field situation / and yank the follow thru short as you execute your shot - neither of which is a good thing.
But barrel length is relative to the size of the shooter too / at 6'5" and 290 lbs - a barrel under 28" to me, feels like a toy ....and its just not an effective or versatile shotgun to me. On all of my hunting guns, I like a 30" barrel on my O/U's (even for quail, grouse, etc ), 28" or 30" on my pump and semi-auto's ... and I stay with the same 30" barrels for Skeet and Sporting Clays ( where some guys really like 26" barrels for Skeet ) .... so its really a personal thing. For Trap I move up to a 32" or 34" barrel - because there is less left to right barrel movement - and I go to a 10 lb gun / but in the field, or for Skeet or Sporting - that 32", 10 lb gun feels like I'm swinging a big sewer pipe around - so a couple of inches, and a couple of pounds makes a big difference in how the gun feels in my hands...
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