I have killed a big truckload of deer with an older model scoped smoothbore Deerslayer over the past 30+ years. Out to 100 yards, I have complete confidence in it.
Tar-Hunts are supposed to be the cats azz, but man, $3000?!? Ouch!
Of the three, I'd have to go with the Deerslayer, but really don't think that it is a $1000 "upgrade" over my older deer killing machine.
A big +1 on that Coldbore. I did the same for about 35 years with an old Ithaca 37 smoothbore Deerslayer. Shot it with iron sights as a kid, and when I could afford a scope, I scoped it. Passed it on to my son who is doing the same with it. This season, he took a large doe at 129 lasered yards, one shot bang flop. We have several other smoothbores that will do the same, all scoped of course.
I've been playing with slug guns both smoothbore and rifled barrel since the sixties. It's really not that difficult to tune a smoothbore with foster slugs and make it a 150 yard gun. And with foster slugs selling on sale for $1.99 a box, it's affordable to practice at that range if you need to convince yourself, LOL.
I think rifled barrels and sabot slugs are way overrated, unless you plan to consistently shoot at ranges from 150 to 250 yards, and it's going to break the bank to do much practicing at those ranges.
I distinctly remember, when Hastings first came out with their rifled barrels, and sabot slugs weren't even invented yet, how they touted Winchester foster slugs for best results in their barrels. But what REALLY caught my attention, was in their advertisements, they stressed how a rigidly mounted scope will increase your accuracy 350%. I realized what they were really telling me, was that if I had a rigidly mounted scope on my smoothbore sluggun, I didn't need their barrel.