Well, first of all, hunting and home defense are two very different things, and what you're hunting (doves, deer, turkey) will also lead to very different shotgun configurations.SpyderEdgeForever wrote: ↑Sat Nov 03, 2018 11:25 amOut of all of them who makes the best home-defense and sporting as in hunting shotgun for the cost, that you all know of, when it comes to safety, quality of components such as barrel and stock, and other mechanisms?
For home defense an 18" barrel (bbl) is as short as you can legally go without getting into NFA paperwork and tax stamps. An 18" bbl with IC or straight cylinder bore and tight patterning buck shot is common. For deer hunting most folks are using fully rifled bbls with rifle sights or scopes and sabot slugs. Most turkey hunters use 24" bbls with tight chokes and rifle sights, low powered scopes, or red dot sights. For shooting birds in flight (dove, quail, geese, ducks, etc) most folks use 26"-30" bbls with full length vent ribs and a bead on the front of the bbl, plus an ammo and choke combination appropriate to the size of the bird and the expected shooting distance. As you can see, very different setups.
The best compromise is to get a Remington 870 or Mossberg 500 with two or three bbls for your desired applications. If you just want a single bbl that's a jack of all trades a 24" bbl with a front bead and screw in chokes can serve most purposes, but doesn't do any very well.