[fabsroman]

The longer barrel tends to help the ineperienced shooter a lot. It has a longer sighting plane and since the gun weighs more it makes it more difficult for the shooter to stop his swing early (i.e., not use the proper follow thru). With that said, all my sporting o/u's are 30" barrels and all my autos are 28" barrels. The reason for the 28" barrel on the autos is because the 3"+ receiver on the auto makes up for the 2" shorter barrel. The only shotgun I own with a barrel shorter than 28" is a 26" BPS with a IC fixed choke 26" barrel, but I also own a full fixed choke 30" barrel for that gun, and the other gun is a youth model Beretta 391 with a barrel shorter than 26".

Yes, there was the debate many years ago about most powder burning in any barrel longer than 18" and there were actually articles out about it too. That thread was almost 3 years ago when I first joined this site and it ended up getting pretty ugly and a member was banned from the site. I don't think I will ever forget that thread. So, barrel length has nothing to do with velocity or choke constriction.

With that said, a shorter barrel might have shorter forcing cones, but I highly doubt that too. Plus, I would doubt that a Mossberg has lengthy forcing cones, but I don't know much about those guns so I might be wrong.

Glad to see that you have really taken a liking to waterfowling Tater.