I bought one for my 10 yr old and I put a red dot on it for him. Makes easy heavy cover shots and still gives him a slight advantage over iron sights.
As far as rifled barrels and smoothbore barrels I prefer smoothbore on my brush guns. I wouldn't want to shoot over 75-80 yds with open sights myself and the extra money I would spend on sabots wouldn't be noticed in that range. If you're planning on heavy brush, close range, what's the need of the sabots? Slugs are heavier and alot more punishing on the flesh. Sabots may deflect on twigs and saplings where a standard slug will just plow through it.
I do have an Encore rifled slug barrel and I do use it for wide open areas where I may ge long shots, but I prefer my 1100 and my 1187 smoothbores for driving and short brushy areas. I used the Hornady SST's and this year I'm tryign out the Remington Accu-Tips (both around 385-390 grn. range) I can tell you this, I had a Horndady SST go through a small tree and break into parts and struck a deer in the head last year on a 110 yd shot. I didn't see the tree in my scope, but it was inline with my shot. The deer dropped on the spot, but right in front of where it laid was a tree (about 1 1/2" diameter) with a near perfect hole through it. Only a small fragment of the bullet struck the deer, but it hit right above the eyeball and came out behind the ear. LUCK......I can't say anything but LUCK! Slugs just have a little more....ok quite a bit more OOOMF!
