Very hard to get used to when you shoot other guns with a top slide safety.
I found using this gun for walk up bird shooting, is that when the dog is on point, I walk up and slide the safety off and walk until the bird/s fly and then shoot. After, open gun, reload, make sure safe is on and continue.
I would imagine that when these guns were made with the side safety that it was for driven birds, when you started to mount gun, safety went off, and so on.

David