The best turkey choke for a Mossberg 500, and how to know it fits

How we picked

We haven't screwed any of these tubes into a barrel or shot a pattern with them. Every tube here earned its place two ways: the maker's own fit chart names the Mossberg 500, and the tube scored on the choke rubric in our published First-Season Score — load compatibility 30%, constriction options 20%, thread fit coverage 20%, build and porting 15%, maker guidance 15% — from maker pages read on 2026-09-22. If you are still working out what a turkey choke does, start at the guns and loads hub and come back.

That first filter matters more than it sounds. Plenty of good tubes fit a Mossberg 500; only some makers say so in print. Kick's, for instance, builds excellent turkey tubes but lists them by thread rather than by gun, and warns that “Mossberg has multiple thread systems that are not interchangeable.” We rank tubes whose makers put the words “Mossberg 500” on the page, so you are not guessing with a credit card.

Which thread your 500 takes (and the 835 trap)

A Mossberg 500 uses Mossberg's standard screw-in system — the one Indian Creek's interchange guide writes as “Accu choke” — and it happens to share threads with Winchester and Browning Invector guns. Carlson's files all three under one heading: “Mossberg 500, 510 Bantam/Super Bantam, 535, 590, 930, 940, 1000, 5500, 9200 & Maverick 88 Shotguns — Interchanges with Carlson's Winchester, Browning Invector & Mossberg 500 style threads.” So a tube sold as “Winchester / Browning Invector / Moss 500” is the tube you want, even though your gun is nowhere in the first two names.

The trap is the other Mossberg. The 835, the 935 and the 535 Turkey Thug take a different, larger pattern that Carlson's sells as its own separate thread and that Kick's and JEBS both label Ulti-Mag. You can see the difference in the numbers: Carlson's TSS tube is 0.640 in for the 500 thread and 0.675 in for the 835/935, and Indian Creek's Strike is 0.660 or 0.670 in for the 500 (Model #0001) against 0.675 or 0.690 in for the 835/935 (Model #0004). An 835 tube will not do your 500 any favors, and it should not be forced into the barrel at all.

The four tubes, side by side

Every value links to the maker page it came from. A dash means the maker does not publish that figure, and the score treats it as missing rather than assuming the best.

Why Carlson's Extended Turkey ranks first

Most turkey tubes give you one exit diameter per gun and leave the rest to luck. Carlson's Extended Turkey gives a Mossberg 500 owner six — 0.640, 0.660, 0.665, 0.670, 0.675 and 0.680 in — and then tells you where to start. Its choke tube information page carries a chart for the WIN/Invector 12 ga thread: 0.670 in for #4 shot, 0.660 in for #5 and #6, 0.640 in for card and block shooters. Nobody else in this lineup matches a size to a shot size in print, and for a first turkey gun that is the difference between a decision and a coin flip.

The rest of the tube is plain and well documented: it extends about 1 in past the muzzle with a 1.050 in parallel section, it is 17-4 heat-treated stainless with a matte blue finish, and Carlson's backs it with a lifetime warranty. Carlson's rates it for “Lead, Copper, Nickel, Bismuth, and Hevi-Shot,” which covers the shells most first-season hunters actually buy.

The honest catch: Carlson's does not rate this one for TSS, and it is not ported. If recoil is your worry, the Indian Creek Strike has 30 parallel ports and goes in without a wrench; it scores 7.2 and gives you two sizes rather than six.

TSS or lead: the split that decides your pick

Turkey chokes are cut for a kind of shot. Buy the shells first, then buy the tube that the maker rates for them. Two of these four sit on the lead side: Carlson's Extended Turkey (lead, copper, nickel, bismuth, HEVI-Shot) and Indian Creek's Strike, which Indian Creek says accommodates “all lead and hybrid heavy loads with shot sizes from #2 through #10” and which sends TSS questions to the shell makers.

Carlson's TSS Turkey, item 38005, is the tungsten answer: one 0.640 in exit that Carlson's says is optimized for Federal Premium Heavyweight TSS and works with other makers' turkey ammunition in “Smaller shot size 7-9.” If you have already been handed a box of TSS shells, buy that tube and stop reading this section. Our picks for TSS chokes cover the same ground across gauges, and what size shot for turkey explains why tungsten lets you drop to smaller pellets.

The JEBS Head Hunter is the outlier. Its patented multi-stage bore and four exit sizes are real engineering, and JEBS names the Mossberg 500, 535 and 930 on its Browning Invector option — but JEBS publishes no load rating at all, no material and no warranty terms. That is why a tube with the second-most sizes in this lineup finishes last at 5.8. If you want a maker to tell you what its tube is rated to shoot, look above it.

Which exit diameter should you start with?

Smaller is not automatically better. A tube that is too tight for your shell can blow the pattern open instead of tightening it, and Carlson's says its own chart is “a starting point; there are exceptions for every shotgun and load.” For a 12 ga Mossberg 500 the sensible starting points look like this.

Then prove it on paper. Carlson's tells you to shoot at a target big enough to hold a 30 in circle, start at 40 yards and average three to five targets. Indian Creek publishes a nine-step version: a 4 ft square target at 40 yards, find the center of the pattern rather than your aiming point, trace a 10 in circle there and count the hits. Mississippi State University Extension puts the bar at 100 holes in a 10 in circle at 40 yards. Our walkthrough is here: how to pattern a turkey gun. Indian Creek also warns that a new tube is likely to move your point of impact, so pattern before the season, not the night before.

Fitting it without wrecking the threads

Screwing in a choke tube is a two-minute job that people still manage to do expensively. The makers publish the same short routine. Wipe the barrel threads and the tube threads clean, then start the tube by hand and let it turn smoothly — Indian Creek's instruction is blunt: “When installing chokes, make sure threads screw-in smoothly and that the choke is completely seated in the barrel. If these steps are not followed damage may be caused to barrel and/or choke,” and on its interchange page, “Never attempt to force a choke that does not screw in easily.”

Two details surprise first-time buyers. First, a small gap is normal: Indian Creek says its tubes are designed to sit with a gap of up to 1/32 in between the tube and the end of the barrel, so a tube that does not sit flush is not necessarily wrong. Second, extended turkey tubes are meant to be hand-tightened. Primos's instruction for its own tubes is “grip the knurled end and hand-tighten only. No tools needed. DO NOT OVER TIGHTEN,” and Kick's says the same about installing and removing with your fingers. Check the tube is still tight after every few shots at the pattern board, and never fire a shell with anything in the barrel.

What a tighter tube cannot fix

A turkey choke buys you pattern density, not marksmanship, and it can quietly take something away at close range. The NWTF puts it in one sentence: “With today's ultra-tight chokes, shooting a turkey closer than 20 steps can be tough,” with the writer describing a pattern the size of a quarter at 11 steps and a gobbler that walked away untouched. The same article gives the sensible window: “Ideally, try to shoot turkeys at 20 to 40 yards, where you're sure to have a good, thick pattern.” Pattern your Mossberg at 20 and 30 yards as well as 40 so you know what the close shot looks like.

Where you point it matters as much as what the tube does. Pennsylvania's hunter safety course states the rule for shotgun hunters: “greater success is achieved when hunters shoot at the head and neck area of the bird,” because feathers and heavy wing bones can stop shot from reaching the vitals of a body shot. Our guide to where to aim on a turkey shows what that looks like when a bird is strutting, walking or standing alert.

Buyer's guide: your first Mossberg 500 turkey tube

The 500 is one of the most common first turkey guns in the country, and the factory tube that came with it was made for everything from clays to rabbits. A dedicated turkey choke is the cheapest upgrade the gun will ever get: it squeezes the pattern into the 10 in circle where a gobbler's head and neck live, which the NWTF puts at roughly 4 square inches of target.

Four things to settle, in this order:

1. Your barrel's thread. Standard 500, 535, 590, 930, 940 or Maverick 88 → the Winchester/Browning Invector/Moss 500 tube. An 835, 935 or 535 Turkey Thug → the 835/935 or Ulti-Mag tube instead.
2. Your shells. Lead or HEVI-Shot type loads point you at Carlson's Extended Turkey or Indian Creek's Strike; TSS points you at Carlson's TSS Turkey.
3. Your exit diameter. Use the maker's chart as a starting point, and expect to test more than one shell.
4. Your pattern. Nothing above is true until your gun prints it on paper at 40 yards.

On budget: there is no cut-price tube in this lineup, because the wallet-friendly Primos Tight Wad is listed by thread rather than by gun — Primos names the Invector 12 ga version but not the Mossberg 500 — so we will not rank it on a page about a specific shotgun. It is the budget pick on our best turkey chokes roundup, where the thread question is yours to match. Patternmaster also sells a separate 12 ga Mossberg 500/535/930 version of its Code Black Turkey if you want a fifth option to research.

One more honest note about range. Choke makers publish generous numbers, and shell makers publish more generous ones still. Missouri's conservation department, writing for new hunters, says plainly that “shooting at a turkey at more than 40 yards is not recommended, regardless of which gauge shotgun is used.” Read how far you can actually shoot a turkey before you trust any yardage claim, including a maker's.