Posted on by Sherman A. House DDS

The OLD MAN Shotgun (inspired by Claude Werner AKA THE TACTICAL PROFESSOR)

The Mossberg 590, has been a staple of the Mossberg catalog since the late 1980’s, and it has been in law enforcement and military use for that same time period. The top shotgun is the 590A1 with a Hogue short stock (for scale), and the bottom is the newer Mossberg 590S. The two differ mainly in the fact that the 590S comes with the Bantam (12” LOP stock) and has a receiver cut to accept a, “K-footprint,” or other pistol mounted optic (this is the Holosun EPS with the multi-reticle) and accepts 1.75” short shells, AKA, “mini-shells.” The 590A1 holds eight, 2.75” 12 gauge shells…and the 590S holds up to NINE of the 1.75” mini shells, in a significantly lighter, handier and shorter package than its military brother.

If you look up ANY health problem, no matter how minor, the frequency of occurrence for them increases after age 50, in general. Well, having recently reached that, “milestone,” in my own life, I can tell you, joint pain is real. All of the things I did in my youth, whether related to sports like rugby and BJJ, or my work in public safety and the armed transport industry, coupled with my last twenty years in dental surgery, it is all definitely haunting me now. But luckily I am still healthy, and despite some creaks and crunchiness, I am aging as gracefully as I can.

One thing that I never experienced in my younger days though was rhomboid pain. WOW! It is absolutely awful! In addition to it hurting, it makes extending your arm to shoot a pistol, very difficult and sometimes if the muscles are in spasm, impossible. Shooting a long gun is a bit easier, but with a full house 12 gauge, it can be very in pleasant. (Nobody really describes a 12 gauge in a manually operated shotgun as pleasant, but you catch my drift). So when I saw on Rhett Neumeyer’s DEMONSTRATED CONCEPTS Patreon page that he was using 1.75” mini-shells with great effect in his cheek shotgun platform, I thought it was worth looking into. With the 1.75” shells in #4 buckshot (15 pellet load) and a 1 ounce slug, the recoil appeared to be significantly attenuated, but also, and more importantly, the gun seemed to run well. He also tested the shells in clear ballistic gel, and the results for the slug and #4 buckshot were adequate by FBI Standards.

Twenty years ago, on the TOTAL PROTECTION INTERACTIVE website, when I was about thirty, and Claude Werner was approximately my age currently, he began a post series of what he called, “The Old Man Gun,” which was a defensive handgun configured around the idea of something that was concealable, but also highly usable by someone who has diminished hand strength, dexterity or failing vision. And possibly loading ammunition that is slightly less effective in terms of ballistics but still functions reliably in the gun. When I was driving back from the last range trip, I started to think that an analogous idea could be achieved with a home (or business) defense shotgun. So I set out to equip a shotgun to be easy to use, with a sighting system that takes advantage of my far-sightedness but also works within the confines of my home. Here’s what I came up with.

SHORT SHELLS

The 1.75” 12 gauge, “Mini-Shell,” isn’t anything new. When I was in high school in the 1990’s, I remember a mail-order outfit called, “ADVENTURER’S OUTPOST,” selling them. This same company would later become TACSTAR and their most famous product was probably the, “side saddle,” that bolted to the receiver of Remington 870’s and Mossberg 590’s. These were super popular in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, before the Velcro panels came along and changed the game forever. Somewhere around the early 1990’s, the name changed to TACSTAR and the Adventurer’s Outpost disappeared. Although there is a Disney product/location of the same name, so it wouldn’t surprise me if old Uncle Walt’s lawyers shut the name use down, which necessitated the change in the company name. Nonetheless, they were selling 1.75” shotgun shells in buckshot, Foster slugs and birdshot, all the way back then…so around 35 years now. Federal is making the ones that I use, along with Aguila and a few other manufacturers I have not used yet. The mini-shells offer lower recoil, more tubular magazine capacity (because they are shorter) and until recently, ABHORRENT function. Back then, without significant gunsmith modifications, the guns wouldn’t cycle them well. Mossberg designed the 590S to work with any shell between 1.75” and 3”, and in my testing, it works well.

PROBLEMS (illustrated)

Connecticut designed these to work with the short shells, and they do…
But in a move that should surprise no one, the ejection port is the same dimension as any other 590. Which means that if you drop a 1.75” shell into the open ejection port, you better be damn sure it’s pointing the correct direction. While trying to close the action on a reversed shell will do nothing, it’ll cost you time and cause frustration. Which isn’t what you need when the chips are down. I found that dropping it into the chamber slightly muzzle down before running the slide made sure it fell into the chamber correctly and positively. When racking in subsequent rounds, you should always rack authoritatively and without stuttering/hesitation, and with that, function was 100%. Don’t forget…pump action shotguns are powered by ARM STRONG. If you short stroke a shotgun, it will fail, but that will happen with any shell length.

SNAKES ON A PLANE (and optics on a shotgun)…THEY BOTH SOUND WEIRD TO ME IN THEORY

The optics plate, as it comes equipped from the factory, is retained with two thread locked plates. If you remove this plate, there are two holes that are compatible directly with the, “Holosun K,” size footprint optics, and with some degreasing, drying and then test fitting, installation of the optic is a breeze. As my buddy Rick Remington likes to remind me, “INCH POUNDS SHERMAN!” I haven’t stripped an optic screw yet, but if you are a Conan with a Torx driver, take it easy, and use a torque limiter or a torque wrench of some kind and walk the screw torque to the factory specification!

IN APPLICATION

Like most of you, my shotgun is for home defense. In my home, the farthest shot is about 15 yards, but a few of those would require partially shooting through a 90 degree wall. So 10 yards is about the limit for a straight on shot. I patterned the shotgun, and the results are here:

WOW! Look at the size of those #4 buckshot holes! Not really…this is the patterning with the GOLD STANDARD shotgun loading, the Federal Flite Control 00 Buckshot with the excellent Versa-Tite wad that keeps the shot payload together to limit the spread at distance. From 5 yards, all the way to 20, the EIGHT pellet pattern is well contained into the, “A-zone,” of a USPSA target. I’m happy with that. With the short stock (12” LOP) it is easily controllable and fun to shoot. If you’re a young buck or just don’t want to fiddle with short shells, load the Federal FC 8 pellet 00 buckshot and rock on!
THIS IS the patterning with the Federal 1.75” Mini Shells loaded with 15 pellets of #4 buckshot. As you can see, there is a noticeable difference in pattern size/density/dispersion in the five yards between 15 and 20 yards. Since I plan to use this in the house, I know where to limit my spread to, AND keep the 00 Flite Control in reserve if the NINE mini-shells in the gun are insufficient.
At 20 yards, these five Federal 1.75” slugs were very controllable and flew straight and true. The recoil, despite the slug weighing the same as a 2.75” slug (1 ounce) and traveling along at a brisk 1200 feet per second at the muzzle, is very mild. You could shoot these all day without issue. For walking around in bear and big cat country here, nine rounds of slugs in this 590S would be great anti-predator protection.
At ten yards, with the, “32 MOA CIRCLE,” only reticle of the Holosun EPS, the circle is just as big as the 9-ring of the B8 target, and one round send keeps all 15 of the #4 pellets inside of the 7 ring with the majority (12/15 in the 9 and 10 rings). That’s easy math to calculate in a hurry. Look at the threat, see, “through,” the reticle and press the trigger. BOOM SHUCK SHUCK and repeat as necessary. Remember, as the wise Jedi Master Tom Givens teaches, every trigger press from a shotgun is a SINGLE use of force with (in this case) 15 unique projectiles. This is both a blessing and curse. Not too many threats will withstand a shotgun blast of buckshot at that distance BUT ALSO you must be accountable for every projectile you send. Worry less about over penetration, and worry more about shot placement. Keep the pellets in the threat, whether attacking man or beast.

IN SUMMARY

It seems like only yesterday I was a black haired, svelte 30 year old reading Claude’s OLD MAN GUN articles with academic interest but thinking it wouldn’t apply to me anytime soon. Well, soon is relative. Now, those times are rapidly approaching for me. So I am ready. You won’t catch me ripping off full snort .44 Magnums one handed or .500 S&W’s like I once did, anymore. I got all of that out of my system! Steel frame 1911’s in 9mm, and steel frame M&P’s will be with me for the rest of my days, along with wad cutters in my J-frames and buckshot in my shotgun. While I can use either load in my 590S, you might not be able to. Your wife might weigh 100 pounds, and she would be far better off with the mini-shells. Or maybe you want to take a shotgun class but you just can’t stand the thought of gutting through two days of full power 12 gauge birdshot, buckshot and slugs. Give the mini-shells a try! If it works for you, then you are winning at life. As a medical professional, with decades of experience, I have deduced over time that humans have so much variation across the continuum of normal anatomy and physiology, that what suits one person in terms of function, will not fit another. These issues compound with age, and amassed injuries. So adaptations have to be made. Never stop innovating for yourself…nobody else is going to do it for you!

THANK YOU FOR READING! As always, everything in this piece is owned, and was purchased, by yours truly. And all of this was written by me, on my iPad, without the use of Artificial Intelligence of any kind! If you like my work, please like, share on your social media platforms and subscribe to the feed here so that you never miss an article. I proudly have ZERO social media presence now, so if you are reading this, thank you for your landing here and thank you for reading. -Dr. House

See? I had hair all over most of my head, once. And I would also fire off S&W 500 Magnums at pop bottles that were 50 yards away. And sometimes, I’d even hit them. But now? Now that I rely on my hands for income generation, I would make smarter decisions! Micro damage is cumulative!