Stoke ’er With Shorties

In terms of ammo availability, the 590A1 with its eight-plus-one capacity already has more ammo on tap than 99 percent of shotguns. If you feed it the Aguila 1 3/4" Minishells, capacity runs to 12+1. Each buckshot shell has 11 #4 buck pellets.

These shells have two perceived drawbacks. The first is they don’t pattern very well at a distance. This is generally true but in my testing with the 590A1 Retrograde all 11 pellets went into the head of a standard IPSC target at 30 feet — perfectly acceptable accuracy for defending your castle.

The second, and more important drawback, is the Minishells don’t function reliably in most shotguns. A device called the OPSol Mini-Clip will solve the functioning problem in Mossberg pump guns and transform the shorty into a “high-capacity” firearm.

I have one in my home-defense Mossberg 590A1 and it increases the overall capacity using the Minishell to a total of 165 .24-caliber projectiles on tap. The OPSol Mini-Clip installs and removes in seconds and only runs about $15.