Ideas
So I did some testing and found out what this means, or at least how it's working whether this was the intention or not. Yes as Gewby points out you are not to do anything while you are doing this excluding firing your weapon, but I also understand what harbeden means also regarding reloading. The game expects you to do this in one life, if you get downed but revived it resets despite being the same life technically. You cannot use anything but your shotgun while you attempt a run, any other action you take regarding equipment will reset it. However, the reload concept is bizarre, you are allowed to kill someone then reload and it won't reset. However if you fire and do not kill anyone in that series of shells in the tube, then it resets. You MUST kill someone before reloading whether by your choice or if you ran out of ammo in the tube. Doing so prior to a kill resets the whole string. I was not able to test it, but I believe if you fire after a killl; it considers it a new string attempt and reloading will reset if you did not kill someone before running out of the tube. So make sure once you confirm that kill then reload before firing another shot to checkpoint the string on a full tube.
The wording is **bleep** first and foremost. I think youre right for the most part but it's definitely a bug because I got it 1/5 before it reset back to 0/5.