Alright, down to business. The Mossberg 500A is a weapon that depending on your income is either
A) A wonderful piece of equipment at an affordable price
or
B) An ugly pig of a shotgun not worthy of use by your landscaper
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| Behold, in all it's glory. |
Odds are if you're reading about a Mossberg firearm of any type you'll fall into the former of the two statements above. I've owned a Mossberg 500A for around 14 years now and even though it's not my only shotgun, it is my most reliable. I'll admit, I view my Mossy the way I view my favorite pair of sneakers. Old, full of holes, stinky, stained, they still get the job done and I love them, but I only wear them when I'm not trying to look cool. I've other shotguns, but my first Mossy holds a special place in my heart. My dove fat choked heart. In the time I've owned this particular shotgun I've closed many an animal's eyes, from doves and rabbits, to deer and ducks. I actually own three different variations of the same gun, the original 12 gauge woodstock, a synthetic 12 guage I got on a bargain deal that came with an 18" barrel, and a 20 gauge synthetic. All of them came with the most standard barrel length of 28".
Price Point
Originally these were the lowest priced pump actions that were widely available. I won't kid you or try to church it up, each one of my Mossbergs were purchased at big box stores. Sure I could have gone to a local outdoors shop and bought them and gotten a warm fuzzy knowing I helped out a local business, but, the premium they were charging for the exact same weapon was a little steep. The mark up isn't worth the general attitude that the local shops supply whenever they realize you aren't going to buy something that costs a couple of paychecks. Although the prices for these shotguns have risen in the last few years they still remain a fairly affordable option for someone looking for a pump-action. They come in at $400 MSRP, so in reality, at the big box stores you can usually find them for about $230-$250. You can find other variants of the original 500A that will take that price point up considerably. Under $300 for a shotgun? Is it any good?
Value
This in my opinion is where the Mossy pulls away in terms of value. Sure you can pay more for a weapon that is just as reliable, but it gets into cost and worth. In my opinion, the worth of a 500A against the myriad of other pump actions out there is the same, but the cost is what the difference is. Aesthetics aside that is. The warranty on the current iteration of Mossbergs is 10-years. That a pretty good while. The shotgun I consider the closest competitor is the Remington 870 Express, which cost a but more but carries a 2-year warranty. I don't think that there is much more you can say about value since it can be really relative to the person using it, but again, I think the value of the Mossberg is right up there with the rest of the pumps.
Reliability
It's a pump action shotgun. They are inherently reliable because of their simplicity. You load it up, point it at what you intend to make non-living, pull the trigger, and pump the action. There are some moving parts inside but not many. You can take apart the entire thing, but it's really unnecessary. For routine maintenance you don't need any tools and if you need to take the barrel off for any reason it unscrews with a few twists. In the time that I've owned my Mossbergs I honestly can't remember any catastrophic failures that took me out of the field. Mind you, I have shot several thousand rounds through these firearms. I remember a handful of times when the ejector arm failed to catch the tail of a shell and either I just cycled it once more or pushed a rod down the barrel to remove it. Even then, I don't think I can fault the gun itself for that, as it seemed to have been more of an issue with the softness of the shells material. Misfires happen, but again, I think that is almost exclusively an ammo issue and any gun would run into similar problems. One time someone asked me, "Can you hit anything with that?" and it was definitely more of a question of the shotgun itself more than my ability. It's a shotgun. With the exception of firing slugs, these things are really point and shoot. Depending on the chokes you use, the choke the barrel is set to, your swing, a bunch of things I'm not going to get into, your ability to hit or miss things is really dependent on you. But yeah, you can hit things with a Mossberg just the same as you can with a firearm costing tons more. The balance of the shotgun is pretty good and it points easily.
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| Safety in "Kill" position |
Features
Pump shotguns come with a plug that is used to restrict the amount of ammo that can be carried in the weapon for use during certain types of hunting or state restrictions. Some higher end weapons come with a particular type of "plug" that is specific to their weapon. However, Mossbergs come with wooden dowels that have small o-rings attached to them. The o-rings, I have no idea, I lost them years ago and my weapon still works just the same. At first, I thought, "A piece of wood, how cheap" but then I realized, "A piece of wood, that means I don't have to buy a special plug to replace it!" A plus in my opinion. So with the plug, you can hold one in the chamber and two in the belly. Without the plug it will hold five rounds in the ammunition tube plus the one in the barrel. And it just dawned on me why the dowel has the o-ring, so if you pull the barrely off, the dowel wont just slide out. You see, to remove the plug you can go one of two ways. Either, unscrew the barrel and shake the dowel enough til you can pull it out, or you could take the barrel off and then unscrew the ammo tube. You prolly will never need to unscrew the ammo tube but you could if you wanted to.
Another feature standard on Mossbergs (but not their Mexican assembled cousins Mavericks) is the location of the safety. It located on top of the receiver, just in front of where the stock joins it. Some people have complained about this claiming it violates aesthetics, but this isn't something hanging in an art gallery, and it actually is pretty well placed once you get used to. A lot of weapons out there have a safety near the trigger that you push one way or the other to engage or disengage. One of the advantages of the top side safety is it's visibility. It's got a big red dot when it's off safe. Slide it back and the dot is covered, thus, you are off safe. Mind blown, right? The second advantage I've found with this safety is that you can easily slide it off with your thumb without having to put your finger near the trigger. It sounds silly but anytime you have to put your finger near the trigger the chances of an accidental discharge go up.
The choke system. Depending on the specifics of the model you select, I would advise grabbing the one that comes with the Accu-choke system. The fixed choke barrels usually come choked to modified, a good general purpose pattern. The short barrels (18") as far as I know come choked to improved cylinder. The Accu-choke system allows you to switch between the three most commonly used chokes and comes with them and a choke wrench. The versatility that this provides is a definite plus. Chokes is another subject I won't get too much into but maybe with a little luck we can cover it in another post.
The barrels are interchangeable with the same gauge and model. No having to be matched up at the factory or taken to a gunsmith. That pretty standard for pump shotguns, but there are some people who may be hesitant for whatever reason. As I mentioned, one of the Mossys I own came in a combo deal that included a 28" barrel and an 18" barrel. The 28" is great for the field, but my go to home defense is the same shotgun with the 18" barrel attached. Personal decision, but it's a no brainer for most that a shorter barrel will not be near as unwieldy as a longer one inside a house.
Negatives
Although I'm prolly sounding like a Mossberg fanboy, I do have a few criticisms of the 500A. The first one is easily remedied but it needs to be mentioned. The sights. The front sight of these shotguns is a small bead sight. In itself, not a bad sight, it's white and easy to line up, however, it's really easy to lose. As in, it fell off and I lost it. On one outing a few years into my first ones ownership, the front sight fell off. The base of it was still screwed into the barrel but the white bead portion was nowhere to be found. I stayed in the field with it, but I was still pretty disappointed. The remedy is pretty cheap, theres a ton of aftermarket sight out there that will fit, or come with multiple fittings that will easily screw in and make your gun like new or upgraded. I changed mine out iwth a tru-glo universal front sight that works just fine for under 10 bucks.
Another thing is the pump action itself. I mean don't get me wrong, it works fine, but it isn't as smooth as some of it's competitors. Without staying on top of lubrication your slide action could start to get pretty rough. Out of the box it's a little stiff but works itself smoothER but not quite buttery.
Even though I said aesthetics wasn't important, it has to be mentioned. This model won't win any beauty pageants. It's not ugly, but its not pretty. It's hard to explain. The laminate wood model tries it's best but it just isn't gonna make Playboy anytime soon. The synthetic models aren't lookers either, but I think when you go synthetic you just looking for a workhorse anyways. I will say though, both the laminate and the synthetic are durable. I'm sure someone will come out and say, "Well I dropped my once from .06 inches up and it shattered into a thousand pieces. Hey, that happens, but in my years of abUSE I've given mine, they have survived drops on rocks, dirt, asphalt, truck beds and to a lesser degree rugs, carpets, and a dog.
Other than those knocks, I dont think there is much else to say about the 500A.
So, if you're on a budget but want/need/wife allowed to buy a reliable pump, the Mossberg 500A is sound decision. You might be embarrassed to use it around your friends, but with some practice you'll be out-shooting them anyways, and nothing shuts someone up like reminding them the bird they're eating is courtesy of your ugly duckling. ~A.
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| The Mossberg 500A hard at work. Nephew on the right carrying an HR single shot, and the shadow is my old man armed with a cheap camera. |
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