Apologies in advance if this is the wrong forum, but for those of you who own tactical shotguns, what's your practice regimen?  While I'm considering buying a bullpup shotgun for home defense, I'm not sure I can get excited going to the range every week and shooting 5 rounds at 10-15 yards, and I'm afraid I'd look silly shooting trap.

Do you have a place out in the country where you could go and shoot it?  Shotguns with bird shot don't go that far, just know what is behind your target.   I would suggest you go with a 870 Remington riot gun or a Mossberg riot gun.  Traditional Shotguns are intended for hunting and as such -  built so they instinctively come up to the correct aim position. Traditional riot guns are same thing but with shorter barrels.   There is a herd of new shotgun tacticool designs that one might be able to adapt to using over time but traditional shotguns have a more user friendly learning curve. Anyway make the project of familiarization interesting. Use some empty 2 liter pop bottles filled with water or old milk jugs filled with water or balloons or empty tin cans (just don' t leave a mess behind, pick up after yourself). Using a skeet thrower can also make it interesting and there is no rule that says you cant shoot skeet with a 18 in barrel.  Like any other skill the more you do it the more confidence you will have in your  ability to manipulate the firearm safely.  Snakes and cactus make ideal targets but you may have a long drive to find those. Just stay away from the tacticool designs and remember that should you ever have to use it for self defense it's way better if it looks like Elmer Fudd's gun.  You realize that you can cut a long barrel down to 18 inches (leave an extra half inch in case someone sucks at measuring). And Brownels has a front sight bead with tap kit so you can put a bead on it.  Honestly most people other than  skeet  shooters don't practice a lot with their shotguns even the police don't spend much training time with it compared to what the spend trying to barely qualify with their handgun.

No idea how many tactical courses there are in your area - (MA?) but down here there are places to train.

I also recommend a traditional shotgun for home defense.  No matter what you use, the first thing you need to do is patten the shotgun at different distances.  As far as drills, I just practice keping the thing loaded.  Tac and combat reloading, all of which you can do at home with dummy rounds.  This is a fun drill


https://youtu.be/IYsCW4SmiOI

Shoot one, load one.
Shoot two, load two.
Shoot three, load three.
Shoot four, load four.
Shoot five, load five.
Shoot five.

Practice change loading  different loads.

Pattern at various ranges with different loads. Record the results.

Practice with different
loading techniques.

Practice with different shell carriers.

Shoot slugs for groups.

Shoot different slugs for groups.

Shoot different “cover” to see what different loads will defeat.

Shoot clays.

Nope.  I belong to a club with a 100 yard rifle and shotgun range, but only 1 station will let you set up a target closer than 25 yards.  The nearest places "out in the country" are about an hour's drive away, and right now I'd have the quarantine for 10 days if I drove there and back.



"Tacticool" or not, I'm looking at a bullpup design specifically for maneuverability.  



Not allowed at my club.  I'm not even sure my club would allow me to use clay target holders.



There's certainly no rule about it, but how well do the skills transfer for home defense?



That's what I was afraid of.  I'm not going to judge "most people," but owning a gun and not practicing with it regularly goes against my nature.  So I may stick with weapons which I will practice with.  Thanks for your comments.

Along with the other recommendations, I'd recommend taking a good shotgun course. We at GreenOps (https://www.green-ops.com/) teach shotgun classes, but Tom Givens (https://rangemaster.com/), Rob Haught (https://sym-tac.com) along with Tim Chandler (https://www.fpftraining.com/) and Ashton Ray (http://360performanceshooting.com/) are all highly respected preachers and teachers of the gauge.