Pump Shotgun

The pump-action shotgun deals heavy damage to an enemy or lighter damage to many, in a spread. It holds 8 shells with 128 in reserve. The spread of the 10 pellets in a shell can take down multiple Infected at a time. This often makes it better at handling Hordes than the submachine gun or pistols. It reloads about 2 shells per second and fires 1 shell per second. Although the range on the shotgun is much better than most First Person Shooter games and more true to reality, the spread of the shotgun makes pistols better for ranged encounters.

On both shotguns, the reloading is both a curse and a blessing; it allows topping off the magazine on the fly, and the reloading process can be stopped to handle sudden threats. However, if you are reloading when empty, you will manually pump the shotgun at the end of the reload, regardless or whether it finished or was interrupted. A good trick is to interrupt an empty reload after the first shot by clicking the fire button and then reloading again, as you have gotten the racking animation out of the way and can immediately fire if a threat appears. Another tip is just to simply never have less than 2 shots in your shotgun at any one time, reload constantly.

Like the auto shotgun, the shotgun can kill The Witch with one hit if all the pellets strike her head before she rises, making it useful for getting the Cr0wnd achievement.

Tactics

 * When being attacked by Hordes, it is best to do a melee attack after each shot to push back Infected while pumping and increase survivability.
 * Also, you can melee as you reload instead of just standing there waiting to finish reloading. As this can help keeping the Infected at bay while not leaving you open to attack during the reload.
 * As a rule of thumb, team members with the shotgun should be at the front to reduce the chance of friendly-fire.
 * DO NOT use the shotgun as a sort of far-ranged sharpshooting weapon. It is better to use the Hunting rifle in the game or the Assault rifles/pistols.

Real steel information
The side of the shotgun says "Renegade Rangemaster", which is meant to sound similar to the very common "Remington Wingmaster", a variant of the Remington 870. The safety and slide release resemble the kind seen on the Remington series shotguns, but it possesses several features found on Mossberg shotguns, notably the 500 Mariner: The pump forearm is ribbed, where Remington shotguns nearly always use a smooth forearm. The magazine tube holds 6 rounds and extends one round beyond the pump; most Remington shotguns either have the magazine tube run all the way to the end of the barrel, or just the end of the forearm. Likely, Valve decided to mix features to give the shotgun a look that retained the distinct look of a hunting shotgun, while not looking totally generic. A flashlight is secured to the shotgun by a magazine tube mount.