Spurred by the discussion in another thread and medical limitations which mean I will never put a shotgun to my shoulder/cheek again, I visited my local Academy Sports who had one of these things and took the display unit home with me.
I own a TAC14 12ga and after almost a year working with the thing I have found it wanting in my personal use. I cannot stick the thing out in front of my face or against my cheek and fire it for the same reasons I can no longer use a conventional shotgun, so I resorted to the center of chest/sternum type index for that gun. It works well enough at close range but I struggle with vertical stringing and consistently being on target any further than that 7-10 yard range using this index. Even after a lot of practice.
What intrigued me about the 410 version is the very low recoil while retaining the ability to put some substantial 000 buck down range at modest velocities, and maybe getting a better sight picture/index safely because of the low recoil.
Turns out that hunch was right and I can put this thing in front of my face all day long and shoot without any danger of wacking myself, with any available load so far.
I have only had three range sessions, trying various types of 000 buckshot loads for the pattern, ease of cycling.
The Winchester 3 pellet and 5 pellet loads are not patterning well and the 5 pellet Winchester has the worst recoil so far. The 2.5" Winchester shells have produced the only malfunctions so far in terms of cycling the action. However both the Remington 2.5" 4 pellet and 3" 5 pellet produce much tighter groups and cycle easily. The mag tube will take 5 of the 2.5" shells so that is at the moment my go to loading for this little gun. The mag tube will only hold 4 of the 3" shells.
I got one of the pic rails for the top of the receiver and mounted a Holosun 407CO which is a really good choice for me for a rig like this. When I bring the thing up to face level in front of me the dot is right there. This outfit makes an
8 round side saddle perfect for 410 shells (their version sized for rifle cartridges).
Today I patterned that 4 pellet Remington load at various distances, the pictures are my 10 yard, 15 yard and stretching it a bit too far 25 yard groups. This project is a work in progress for me and I will report more observations as I play with this thing and learn more, but my early results are encouraging. I doubt this becomes any more than my basic farm gun that gets throw it over my shoulder to go see what the dogs are barking about