They are good guns. My father has a Ducks Unlimited model (early 1990s, actually an 87 during those years) with both a smoothbore and rifles barrel. When he got it, it had a cracked wrist... but the stocks for them are impossible to find.
Last Father's Day, I found an identical gun... with good wood. Switched out the furniture for his, but was left with a stock-less Ithaca. Had a few issues, including some rust from hard use over the years, but was a sound action. Got new wood from Boyds (walnut), had the barrel lopped off around 20" (also threaded for Remington chokes and new beads added), then sent it out to Robar for NP3 Plus.
Backup to my home defense shotgun (an 870 Police, in the same finish). I like the Ithaca design, but prefer a gun that won't rust when it sits bedside for a year. If I got rust stains on the sheets/comforter, my girlfriend would be a little annoyed. [emoji6] Nickel plating solves that argument from even coming up.
In regards to rifled slugs, they do work well. The grooves aren't to create spin on the slug, but to allow them to pass through chokes. You might/might not see any improvement in accuracy anymore than changing the load to something else. Only thing I would not recommend is sabot slugs... you are just pissing money away unless you have rifling.
I don't pattern my home defense guns at 50 yards, but I get identical slug performance at 25 yards with my PDX1 rounds... just extra holes from the 00 pellets behind them. Hunting wise, I predominantly use sabots and a scope in my 11-87... which is dedicated as a slug gun (I have another 11-87 for field work). I zero at 100 yards, but that keeps me in the green in the ranges I'd actually be shooting at.
, but rifle sights on a smoothebore. I wondered who else had one and Do you get results like this with rifled slugs. Also how far you shoot with it, and, scope on yours or not.
