Mossberg 500 Thunder Ranch Shotgun
Mossberg teamed up with Clint Smith, the President of the Thunder Ranch training facility in Oregon, to design the Mossberg 500 Thunder Ranch Shotgun.
Unlike many other special editions guns, a lot of thought appears to have gone into this shotgun. It features a shortened stock with a 12.75" length of pull (LOP) for maneuverability in a self defense situation. It includes a tri-rail on the fore-end for mounting accessories. The barrel is Mossberg's 18.5" Stand Off (breaching) barrel.
| Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Caliber | 12 gauge 3" |
| Capacity | 5+1 |
| Barrel | 18.5" Stand Off |
| Stock | Syntheic Shortened (12.75" LOP) |
| Overall Length | 37" |
| Weight | 6.88 lbs |
| Front Sight | white dot |
| MSRP (Price) | $460 |
I have a Model 500 from the late 60′s. Used it in Alaska without any problems. I think the Thunder Ranch is cool. With a good light on it, you won’t have any problem, day or night. Mossberg is a great weapon line for the money spent.
You are all whiney as hell!
Do you need to breach things in your own home? No. It’s a CQB weapon because you don’t have time to reload or go for something else all the time up close and the bayonet thing hasn’t really caught on. So it’s got some purpose.
In your own home are you gonna shoot more than a few yards? Probably not. You want different sights for other uses? Put em on or buy some thing made for what you wanna do! Is it really that hard?
Shell carrier? Stock or reciever mounted?
Not every one likes em in the same place
A pistol grip? Are you serious? You wanna lawfully shoot some one in your own home and have some jerk Public Defender try to say it’s some sort or assult weapon to a jury who is too dumb to know the difference.
You want the grip? Put it on! It’s only one screw. If you can’t change the stock on a mossberg then you should probably just rely on the police to protect you cause you’re obviously not helping your self out too much.
Maybe mossberg does need to do a couple things to up quality and improve function over form. I won’t dissagree. Write the company! Point is the mossberg is rugged, reliable and gets the job done. Not only that but it’s a flexible platform that can be customized to your needs for relativley cheap compared to other types of weapons. Oh and the controls blow the 870 out of the water!
More importantly if you buy some thing for home deffense it either needs to be exactly everything you need or you need to be able to customize it to your needs or it won’t do what you need it to.
So shut up or don’t buy the damn thing!
Ooops!
I wish Mossberg would cut it with the niche tacticool chainsaw breacher stuff for a year and work on steel safeties and trigger groups, longer forcing cones, slicker actions and choke-tube every smoothbore they make, including the 18.5″. I hold Clint Smith in very high regard, but a “defense” gun needs no breacher, but my house guns need more thought put into them. TR is going to start getting like the Winchester Comemmoration-of-the-month club with their old lever guns: much too much for not that much. This is not to besmirch the companies that have worked these deals; heck, I spoke with Les Baer last week, one of the nicest, most enthusiastic people you’d ever find in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt at a car show. S&W, Mossberg, Les, etc. make good (Les=great)products. Let’s ask them to push that instead of this short-term all-too-cool stuff. BTW, I have several Mossberg pumps, have to work on each of them for a couple of days to get them slicked up, but 2-20 ga. and 1-12 ga will consistentently bounce a coffee can at up to 75 yds. with Forster slugs and a plain white dot sight up front.
This is the second time I’ve run across this gun on a blog tonite. I’ve owned Mossberg shotguns for around 25 years; old rattly slick ones and newer, quieter tight ones that seriously need slicked up. I agree that the breacher is fluff unless you’re a LEO or contractor. For home, a 12″ length of pull 20 gauge with BB’s works for everyone under the roof. Yeah, I said 20 gauge; the recipient won’t know or tell anybody. As for the Thunder Ranch Special of the Week, it’s starting to get like the old Winchester Comemmorative lever guns: much ado about not all that much. This in no way is intended to deride TR or S&W or most of all Les Baer, who is the everyday guy’s surprise when you meet him; just that sticking that logo on doesn’t enhance the basic product line. I REALLY wish Mossberg would focus more on the things mentioned in these varied comments, like triggers, steel safeties and trigger groups, long forcing cones, choke-tube 18.5 barrels, etc. But that’s one of the first things inside several of the doors at our house. And one or two of those smoothbores will chew up a coffee can at 75 yds. with standard Forster slugs with just that white dot up front; one of my kids is a GM in the Navy, will do so at 100, 4/5 times.
I’d say that breaching barrel might work pretty well poking a perp in the head after you’ve run out of ammo!
Why the extra expense of a breaching barrel on a defensive shotgun? Can anyone justify this?
I agree with the others that the money should have been spent on a side saddle. As I remember from talking with Mr. Smith a few years ago, he wasn’t a fan of ghost rings as they block your field of view and he felt that with a little practice, a bead was sufficient for hits at distance.
The break (in my opinion) looks like it could crush some skulls and vital organs if used, and if the user needed to. But i usually agree that breach barrels are useless, how many doors does a civy usually breach anyway?
Guys,
I carried a Mossberg 500 my last tour. The standard sights are sufficient for the range of the gun. This weapon has a 18.5 barrel with a breaching tip. It is a CQB weapon. Red dots and improved sights are not called for with this weapon.
Remington’s accushot slugs provide accuracy waaay beyond a hundred meters out of a quality shotgun; 2-3 inches at 300-odd meters certainly isn’t the most beautiful grouping ever, but it’s certainly not missing, either.
I’ve put 3 rounds into a 3″ group at 100 yds. with a Mossberg 590 with rifle sights. Standard 18.5″ barrel, no barrel mods except the sights. Yeah, it was off a bench, but still…
seriously, rifled slug barrel, sabot slug, rifle sights, 100 yards is VERY doable with a shotty…
Sid, real sights can be useful for extending the range of the shotgun with slugs. Many claim that hits are achievable out to 100 yards. It’s not an ideal weapon at that range, but sometimes you gotta use what you happen to have. How many people have multiple long guns on hand during a bad situation.
My opinion on the rifle sights is like my opinion of the breaching muzzle; it’s probably unnecessary, but it may be handy and there’s no major drawback.
I dunno…since I started listening to Clint all I ever seem to need to carry is a fire extinguisher to squirt them with the white foam and then hit them with the red end…
Wow, laser etching and farkles!
I’m glad to see that it doesn’t have a pistol grip stock on it. Mossberg’s Tang safeties and pistol grip stocks don’t work well together. Better sights would be nice.
Ghost rings? For what? Sights on a shotgun?
In breaching and CQB, a shotgun is pointed. It is not aimed. I agree that pistol grips in a combo with a shoulder stock should be an option. But this package seems to be fairly appropriate.
Rifle style sights would be nice, as would a shell carrier, but I don’t have a problem with the breacher barrel. I don’t really see any downside to having a breacher. It doesn’t add weight, complexity, or anything that can fail. I guess it raises the price a bit and lowers velocity a bit, but those are minor points to me. Sure, most people probably won’t ever need a breacher, but it doesn’t hurt and you never really know what you might need.
I am very suprised the traditional Mossberg 500 pump shotgun was chosen for the Thunder Ranch Edition. The core problem with the M500 is the difficulty in accessing the magazine tube for cleaning or recoil spring replacement – the magazine tube has to be unscrewed from the receiver.
Mossberg’s 590 series uses a conventional magazine cap for easy magazine tube cleaning and as such would have been a superior choice.
This doesn’t quite make up for the DEA special edition they did a while back….
Another day, another Mossberg “special edition”. Mossberg, why not rework to the safety so it can be disengaged with smaller hands without having to take the primary hand out of firing position? Why not work on smoothing out the action at the factory? Or maybe having a little better trigger pull out of the box? Or, heck, even make a ribbed foregrip standard? Any of these things would make a better shotgun that I would buy in a second. Focus on improving the product, not these silly gimmicky things…
They need to make a pistol grip version with the breacher barrel and all these specs on it xD rails are awesome for a flashlight
Oh Thunder Ranch, is there anything you’re not willing to sell your name to? Once again, Mossberg is ruining a perfectly good shotgun for the sake of cheap gimmickry.
The ghost ring, non-heat shield, 590A1 is one of the best shotguns ever made. Why can’t Mossy just market this fantastic piece of kit as advertised?
I give up, I really do.
Huh. I usually roll my eyes at “special edition” guns, but this actually looks pretty useful. Needs some ghost rings or a top rail, though.
All I want from Mossberg is a 18.5″ cylinder bore barrel with rifle sights. That’s it.
Regards,
now that’s pretty nice without being excessively tactical.
Only thing I’d add would be capability for a red dot or ghost ring.
I think Clint Smith is the one of the best voices out there, and I have always appreciated his candor…but this feels more like merchandising than a factory produced version of his ideal home defense gun.
Considering the lessons he has taught in his videos and articles, this gun seems odd. A door breaching tool? This is the guy who convinced me to stop putting needless accessories on a gun, but his own branded gun has a door breacher? Plus, his “you fight with what is in the gun or on the gun” mantra, I’m really surprised that it doesn’t have a shell carrier. I like the fore-end though.
I hate to be critical, because I really do respect the man’s teaching, but somehow this doesn’t fit right.
A quick video with his thoughts on shotguns from 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdW2TAfN3mQ