woohoo...just bought my 1st shotgun

[zauer]

Hi All,

I just picked up a Remington 870 express turkey with a 21" bbl...I'd be grateful for any suggestions as far as slings, home defense loads, and reasonably priced stock recoil reducers. Thanks for all of your suggestions on this shotgun.

[PreserveFreedom]

Congrats! Many here speak highly of the Remington 870. I don't have experience with that particulat model, so the best I can voice on is probably the home defense ammo. However, that depends a lot on your living situation. How close is your nearest neighbor? What type of outer construction does your home have? Does anyone live with you? The reason for asking is to see how big of an issue overpenetration is. At close home defense range, if you have to consider penetration, you are probably best off going with #6 shot or smaller. If you are in the middle of nowhere and living alone, I would go with 00 Buck and/or slugs.

[Guyon]

Zig,

See my recommendations in your original post at Art of the Rifle.

Regarding choke: Choke is really meaningless at HD distances. However most people will recommend an improved cylinder choke. I only mention it for a couple of reasons. First, it will shorten the length of your total barrel by an inch or more--given that you have an XF choke sticking out of that turkey gun. Second, should you want to shoot slugs for some reason, that XF choke won't work so well.

XF is mainly used for turkey hunting where you want the shot to retain its density as far out as possible.

Recoil reducers? Not needed if you go with bird shot in a 2 3/4" load. Recoil only gets nasty in the magnum loads, particularly in the 3" or especially the 3 1/2" shells.

[Dave McC]

Congrats on the 870s, a wise choice.

The best recoil reducer is good form, next is proper stock fit. Leave the heavy loads alone until you're used to the shooting.

Next comes a good pad. The standard Remington job's not bad, but a Decelerator, Kick Eez, or Gooey is better.

Adding weight to the shotgun and reducing the weight and speed of the payload are good ways to cut kick. See the old threads here for tons of input.


HTH....