For reasons that are my own, I wanted to try out an optic on a shotgun again. I had mounted up a dot before and reverted to just a bead since my late 90s Mossberg 500 was a solid 25-30 yard gun with Flight Control 00 buck and the dot didn't seem to add any value at those ranges.
With the PA 1x prism having a ring that's supposed to be a "shot pattern at 25 yards" I figured it would be a good one to try out for the pattern and to get some longer range accuracy with slugs.
The original rail I had was an old weaver-ish rail and the PA prism wasn't sitting correctly on that so I picked up an actual pic rail and it mounted up well. The height to the dot was a bit higher than before but that's an easy fix with the magpul stock; I just got the medium comb riser and that lined it up perfectly for me.
With the optic mounted back like that I can still 'over the top' single load via the ejection port, another good feature of the PA's multiple mounting options that makes up for funky rail limits.
As an aside, the magpul forend can be modified to fit the M500, it used to fit the 500/590 but newer ones only fit the 590 without some internal dremel work.
Somehow I lost an entire ammo can of shotgun ammo, so the Winchester Ranger slugs that I had stashed were.... gone. Not sure how that happened, they have to be here somewhere unless my spreadsheet is lying but the map to where they should be has no information on that ammo can. Instead of my Ranger slugs, I found a small quantity of Federal Truball slugs and being they were all I had they would have to do.
1600 FPS is moving for a 1oz slug, and I could certainly feel that shot after shot.
Using a front and rear bag like a rifle and letting the shotgun 'free recoil', I adjusted to a 25 yard zero with the slugs and that worked pretty well. I moved to 50 yards and it was still hitting well, under 2" center to center. Since I had a spotter working with me I decided to try 100 yards. It was still on pretty well left/right, and just a little tweaking of the elevation and it looked like it was a real 4 MOA shotgun at 100 yards. An 18.5" smooth cylinder bore $199 combo Big-5 Sporting Goods special. Crazy, unexpected and we called that 'good enough'. That said, I had a few more slugs, and there was a freshly painted gong at 150 yards...
With the 100 yard zero I put the tip of the triangle in the middle of the plate and fired.... shot called 6 o' clock low. For the second shot I put the triangle on top of the plate like a little hat and fired... and hit. The spotter told me to come check this out so I went to the spotting scope, and had presence of mind to take a picture knowing no one would believe it.
At this point, we stopped as it couldn't get any better than that. Done! Saving those last 11 truball slugs for another day.
Also, as to the '25 yard pattern' ring? With S&B 9 pellet #1 buckshot the ring is too small by 1/3. The pattern is centered but huge, but that's not unexpected with this shotgun and cheap 'lead chucker' style buckshot. Flight control 00 would be solidly inside the ring and usable.
That 1x now has a permanent home on the M500 and the truball slugs are riding on the side saddle. Some day I'll get more flight control and swap out those S&B 00's on the carrier but for now if somehow I need more than the 5 flight control rounds in the tube, then something has gone really, really sideways.
With the PA 1x prism having a ring that's supposed to be a "shot pattern at 25 yards" I figured it would be a good one to try out for the pattern and to get some longer range accuracy with slugs.
The original rail I had was an old weaver-ish rail and the PA prism wasn't sitting correctly on that so I picked up an actual pic rail and it mounted up well. The height to the dot was a bit higher than before but that's an easy fix with the magpul stock; I just got the medium comb riser and that lined it up perfectly for me.
With the optic mounted back like that I can still 'over the top' single load via the ejection port, another good feature of the PA's multiple mounting options that makes up for funky rail limits.
As an aside, the magpul forend can be modified to fit the M500, it used to fit the 500/590 but newer ones only fit the 590 without some internal dremel work.
Somehow I lost an entire ammo can of shotgun ammo, so the Winchester Ranger slugs that I had stashed were.... gone. Not sure how that happened, they have to be here somewhere unless my spreadsheet is lying but the map to where they should be has no information on that ammo can. Instead of my Ranger slugs, I found a small quantity of Federal Truball slugs and being they were all I had they would have to do.
1600 FPS is moving for a 1oz slug, and I could certainly feel that shot after shot.
Using a front and rear bag like a rifle and letting the shotgun 'free recoil', I adjusted to a 25 yard zero with the slugs and that worked pretty well. I moved to 50 yards and it was still hitting well, under 2" center to center. Since I had a spotter working with me I decided to try 100 yards. It was still on pretty well left/right, and just a little tweaking of the elevation and it looked like it was a real 4 MOA shotgun at 100 yards. An 18.5" smooth cylinder bore $199 combo Big-5 Sporting Goods special. Crazy, unexpected and we called that 'good enough'. That said, I had a few more slugs, and there was a freshly painted gong at 150 yards...
With the 100 yard zero I put the tip of the triangle in the middle of the plate and fired.... shot called 6 o' clock low. For the second shot I put the triangle on top of the plate like a little hat and fired... and hit. The spotter told me to come check this out so I went to the spotting scope, and had presence of mind to take a picture knowing no one would believe it.
At this point, we stopped as it couldn't get any better than that. Done! Saving those last 11 truball slugs for another day.
Also, as to the '25 yard pattern' ring? With S&B 9 pellet #1 buckshot the ring is too small by 1/3. The pattern is centered but huge, but that's not unexpected with this shotgun and cheap 'lead chucker' style buckshot. Flight control 00 would be solidly inside the ring and usable.
That 1x now has a permanent home on the M500 and the truball slugs are riding on the side saddle. Some day I'll get more flight control and swap out those S&B 00's on the carrier but for now if somehow I need more than the 5 flight control rounds in the tube, then something has gone really, really sideways.
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