The Remington "Home Defense" version of the venerable model 870.
If I had to choose only one long gun, it would be a shotgun. I love precision target shooting, and I love my AR, but nothing beats the versatility, reliability, and long lasting tradition of the shotgun. Remington takes this tradition to heart with its longstanding standard, the 870.
The Express HD, is simply an 18" version with a magazine extention allowing for 7 shot capability. I'll admit, it's basic, but for $350 and a $30 mail-in rebate, it's hard to go wrong.
Off the bat, the first thing I was hooked on was how lightweight and simple this shotgun is. No rails, no scopes, or lasers cluttering it up - I did mount a Surefire to the magazine tube, and sometimes think about taking it off, but it's a basic mount, with a Surefire G2 which is fairly lightweight.
Shooting has been so much fun, our whole family has shot clay birds, and I've enjoyed testing patterns with everything from 000 buck, to birdshot. Get this - with rifled slugs, I hit a steel gong at my rifle range, offhand, from 200 yards, on my second try. Just a little holdover (and a bit to the left if I remember right) and THUNK - direct hit at 200 yards. Very cool.
Remington has several lines of their 870 shotguns, and I must admit I don't fully understand the exact details. They make 870 Wingmaster, Express, and Police (if not more). Each line has tons of sub models underneath. My understanding is that the Wingmaster and Police lines share a few higher quality components not present in the 870 Express models - if someone has more specifics, feel free to correct me.
Regardless, in my research, I found that the Express components are more than adequate, not to mention the availability of aftermarket components and accessories - thousands.
I've had one problem, and that was with a box of fancy see-through buck shot not extracting properly. It was when the shotgun was new, and I bought another box which shot with no trouble at all - either the ammo was bad, or the shotgun was not de-greased enough when I first bought it. Other than that - zero problems.
Like I said, hard to go wrong for a $350 gun, that is this versitle.
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