Nice gun. Personally, I'd steer clear of the 3.5 inch loads, IMO all it does is punish your shoulder when patterning, but I'm sure some would disagree. The best thing is to pattern your gun between 20 and 40 yards with different size shot (4's, 5's and 6's) and also different brands. Mark your targets and pick the load that patterns best out of your gun. Maybe you'll have better results with 3.5's, but to me its not worth it, 3" works for me.