20 gauge turkey choke.


VTbrshbstr

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My girlfriend and I went to a gun show today, I had no intentions of buying anything.well not even 5 minutes in and she is buying herself her first gun! She picked out a nice used Mossberg 500 youth model with a 22 inch accu choke barrel. I have never patterned a 20 gauge for turkeys and am not sure what brand/model choke to buy. Any ideas?

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I have a 535 with accu-choke and can only find chokes from mossberg. Luckily it came with mod, improved and full. I have been searching for a good deer and Turkey choke but all any of the big names offer is for the 835 and another that doesn't come to mind right now. I hope you find one but I don't think it's going to be easy. Let me know if you do.

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Hard to go wrong with either a .575 Rhino Choke (1st choice) shooting your preferred load of hevishot or an Indian Creek Choke, or a Jelly Head. Whatever choke you choose, be sure to spend some time patterning different turkey loads to see what load your 20ga likes.

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you'll never know until you buy one and pattern it. Rhinos work but are pretty pricey. Indian Creek and PureGold aren't as much and work very well usually. H.S Undertaker chokes can do well (turkeygirl's setup). i've gotten just OK results from my Benelli 12ga. There's lots of chokes out there for the Moss 500 in 20ga. All the above mentioned make a choke for one. You should consider what you're shooting for shells too. high density or lead. wad designed to stay with the shot or lighter that should be stripped away.

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Lil Strut has smashed some heads with his 20 and a Comp-N-Choke XX-Full tube. It tosses patterns of #5 lead that make me scratch my head and wonder why I lug a 3.5" 12 gauge around the hills.

DO NOT go with the Comp-N-Choke tube if you are going to use any HTL shot other than Winchester Elite.

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What driggins is saying is true. My turkey load/choke combo for my 12 ga. SBE II is a Rhino .670 shooting Nitro H517 12 ga. 3.5" mag shells holding 2 7/16 oz of 4x5x7 Hevi-Shot. They are real expensive shells but they throw, by far the tightest pattern of any loads I've ever shot. How expensive? 5 seasons ago I bought 3 boxes of 25 at ~$165/box. Yea, I shot some 1st & really liked them before buying those boxes. With my rate of fire/season that works out to be about $40/season on shells (up to 3 MS gobblers & 2 MO gobblers), including a least 1 shot to check zero on my holosight. My attitude, that's just a drop in the bucket compared to the $ I spend on gas, etc. each year going turkey hunting. The same shells are now ~$24 more/box and they've come out with a new Mega-Weight shot that I haven't tried yet. Don't need to yet. Nitro shells are also available in boxes of 10. Nitro makes .20 ga turkey loads holding 1 7/16 oz of Hevi-Shot...with several combinations of Hevi-Shot loads to choose from at ~$142/box of 25 or ~$62/box of 10. Many hunting stores will sell Nitro shells at a price/shell that will probably make you choke on the $ they charge. I've never seen them in a store offered at a price/box. They are a lot more econimical buying them by the box directly from Nitro if you even decide to try out their performance through your .20 ga gun/choke combo.

With all that said...for obvious reasons, I hate to burn up those expensive shells zeroing in my holosight before each turkey season. After doing it the 1st time I experimented with other loads to find a cheaper load that held the same zero. I don't recall how many I went through before finding Remington 3" mag no. 6 shot held the same zero...but a lot wider pattern. The other shells I tried were off one way or another...some WAY off. Now before each season...I'll 1st check zero using the Remington shells & after my SBE II is zeroed, I'll check & fine tune (if necesary) with a Nitro load or 2. BTW...I'm picky about my turkey gun's zero so I use a lead sled while zeroing my turkey gun just like I would zeroing in a rifle for deer hunting. No guess work if I was on or off the zero when I pull the trigger & easier on your shoulder too.

Edited by Rhino
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hey Al what's the distance you zero at? about 15 yards?

no...35 yards with my choke/shell combo. Zeroing at 15 or 20 yards leaves my shot pattern a little high at 35 & 40. Not hardly any difference in my zero between 35 & 45 yards. Probably drops some beyond 50 but that's outside where I choose to shoot at turkeys. Also, with the Nitro load I'm shooting I prefer not letting the birds get inside 30 yards if I can help it. Pattern gets real tight inside 25 yards so a lot easier to miss one at 20 than at 40. My closest kill with that load is 11 steps...couldn't be helped.

However, even though I try to choose my killing shots between 30 & 40 yards I did make a big mistake in distance judgement last year on my 1st MO bird. Rolled him at 64 steps in a field. OOPS! I guess it was my 1st lesson in the learning curve with the size of those big MO gobblers compared to these smaller MS birds. A 28# MO gobbler vs. a big gobbler in MS being ~19 or 20#. Every part of that bird from head, neck width to body was hands down larger than a normal mature MS gobbler. The heaviest gobbler I recall killing in MS was ~22#. Heck the state record weight in MS is only ~25#.

BTW...just checked this...the center of my holosight is ~2" above the center of the bore. The shot string is still rising at 15 yards so that should explain the reason I'm sighting in near the middle of my preferred killing yardage.

Edited by Rhino
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