Ha-ha! I have bin thinking about precisely this, lately, having just traded for a '56 Remington 760 pump, considered by many to be THE whitetail gun for the heavy timber. Many opting for the 18" barrel carbine version which by many reports has such a hellacious muzzle-blast that no one wants to be anywhere near a hunting partner firing one. So i'm trying to imagine being in bush SO thick, that i can't swing an already admirably compact rifle with its 22" barrel around without hanging-up. I've never hunted bush so thick. I can imagine if you were in bush that thick, you wouldn't be able to see what you were trying to shoot at anyways. The only arguments i've seen for these uber short barrels that makes any sense to me being 1) you have a tight blind; 2) swinging it around in the cab of your truck. Which isn't an argument around here cos it's illegal to go around blasting away at things from the cab of your truck. For pretty good reason, i'd say.
No, the "I am going to cut the barrel down to two inches
" thing is just the fashion of the week, the fetish of right now. Barrels that can't be short enough, ugly plastic stocks and the 6.5 Creedmore. That's where gun culture groupthink is at right now. We'll move on to something else soon enough.
