Well...after doing some research online and visiting a few other sites, and of course, plenty of hemming and hawing
, I opted to throw a Hastings fully rifled barrel with an integrated muzzlebreak unto my BPS. I'm glad that I went with my gut instinct.
I took my new slug gun to the rifle range over the weekend to get her sighted in at 100 yards along with some expandable sabot offerings in Lightfields, (Hybrid, Low-Recoil, Magnum) and Winchester (Magnums and Fail Safe) in both 2-3/4" and 3" offerings.
The shotgun is topped with a Leupold 2x7 VXII in Leupold Rifleman low rings, which gives plenty of eye relief while allowing rapid target acquisition.(Something that I'm sure I will apreciate come deer season)
The integral muzzlebreak, totaling 24" in length, has a total of twelve radial milled exhaust ports that did an awesome job of keeping the muzzle down and recoil very managable. Since I have not fired an un-ported Hastings slug barrel on a BPS, I cannot honestly attest as to whether the porting is an improvement. I can say that I shot thirtysomething slugs in three shot groups over a two hour period and found that I could manage the recoil rather well. (With that said, it was cold and I was bundled up on Saturday morning) A Winchester .300 magnum is about the high end of my "comfortable ballistic handling" ability. I found the BPS to be well below this range.
I was able to successfully hit 2" groups at 100 yards fairly consistently from a rest. The 3" Magnum loads strayed a little farther but found the 2-3/4" Lightfield Hybrids, the most accurate for my set-up so far.
I was very pleased with the overall results and would not hesitate to recommend this barrel to others looking for an accurate rifled barrel.