The best turkey choke for a Stoeger M3500, and the one word to look for

How we picked

We have not screwed any of these tubes into an M3500 or shot a pattern with one. Every tube here earned its place two ways: a maker's own chart puts it on the thread a Stoeger M3500 uses, 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 2026-09-28. If you are new to chokes altogether, start at the guns and loads hub.

The Stoeger-specific problem is naming. The M3500 shares its choke thread with a long list of Beretta and Benelli guns, and most choke makers file the thread under those brand names rather than yours. That is not a fit problem, it is a shopping problem — and it is why half the reviews you will read online are arguing about the wrong tube.

Which thread a Stoeger M3500 takes

Beretta/Benelli Mobil. Carlson's files this thread as “Beretta/Benelli Mobil style threads (SBE I, Nova & Super Nova, M-1, M-3, M-4, World Class, Legacy (after 2011), Legacy Sport, Montefeltro made prior to 2007)” — a list that does not include the word Stoeger anywhere. Two other makers do name it. Indian Creek's 12 gauge fitment table lists model “#0003 — BERETTA/BENELLI, Super Black Eagle I, Super Nova, A300, Stoeger, Mobil”. JEBS lists its Mobil option as “(Mobl) Benelli M1, SBE 1, Nova, Super Nova, Franchi Affinity, Stoeger M300 & 3500, Tri-Star, Mossberg SA-20, Weatherby, Beretta A-300” — your gun, by model number.

So the rule for an M3500 owner is simple: a tube sold as “Beretta/Benelli Mobil” or “Mobilchoke” is your tube, even though your shotgun is nowhere in the name.

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 Kick's Mobilchoke Gobblin' Thunder ranks first

Two things put it ahead. First, the load rating. Kick's says the Gobblin' Thunder “can be safely used with lead, TSS, or other non-toxic loads,” which is the only rating in this lineup that covers both sides of the shell aisle. On a gun you will still be learning next spring, a tube that does not have to be re-bought when you switch shells is worth real money.

Second, choice. Kick's offers four exit diameters in the Mobil thread — 0.655, 0.660, 0.665 and 0.670 in in black — so after your first session on paper you can go tighter or looser instead of shrugging. The rest of the tube is documented in unusual detail: 17-4 stainless, 4 1/16 in overall with a 1 5/16 in ported section and 2 25/32 in inside the barrel, installed and removed with your fingers, and a published pattern claim of 14 to 16 in at 40 yards.

The honest catch: Kick's publishes no warranty terms at all, where Carlson's covers its tubes for life. And the camo finish is $82 against $72 for the black on Kick's own store, which buys you nothing on a tube that lives inside a barrel.

Lead or TSS: the split that decides your pick

Buy the shells first, then buy the tube the maker rates for them. That order matters more on this thread than most, because Carlson's splits its Mobil turkey tubes cleanly down the middle.

On the lead side, the Carlson's Extended Turkey is rated for “Lead, Copper, Nickel, Bismuth, and Hevi-Shot” and gives you five diameters in this thread (0.640, 0.650, 0.665, 0.675 and 0.680 in, items 19590-19594) — more choice than anything else here. On the tungsten side, Carlson's TSS Turkey item 38010 is a single 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 a box of TSS is already on the shelf, buy that and stop reading this section. Our TSS choke picks cover the tungsten lane across gauges, and TSS vs lead turkey loads covers whether the upgrade is worth it for your first season at all.

Indian Creek sits on the lead side too. The Strike “will accommodate all lead and hybrid heavy loads with shot sizes from #2 through #10,” and for tungsten Indian Creek steps back and tells you to check the shell maker's recommendations. What it gives you instead is the clearest fit statement of anybody — model #0003, with Stoeger printed in the table — plus 30 parallel ports and three diameters.

Which constriction should you start with?

Tighter is not automatically better, and Carlson's says as much: its chart is “a starting point; there are exceptions for every shotgun and load.” For a 12 ga Mobil-thread gun, the published starting points look like this.

Then prove it on paper. Carlson's patterning instruction is a target big enough to hold a 30 in circle, starting at 40 yards, averaged over three to five targets. Indian Creek publishes a nine-step version: a 4 ft square target at 40 yards, find the centre 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 how to pattern a turkey gun.

The two makers that print the word Stoeger

This is worth its own section, because it is the thing that turns a guess into a purchase. Indian Creek's 12 ga fitment table names Stoeger in model #0003. JEBS names “Stoeger M300 & 3500” under its Mobl option. Everybody else — Carlson's, Kick's, Primos, Patternmaster — sells you the correct tube under a Beretta or Benelli heading.

The JEBS Head Hunter deserves a mention and not a ranking. Its patented multi-stage bore is real engineering and it names your gun by model, but JEBS publishes no load rating, no material and no warranty terms for the 12 gauge tube. We do not rank a turkey choke whose maker will not say what it is rated to shoot. If you want that tube, buy it with your eyes open.

Fitting it without wrecking the threads

Wipe the barrel threads and the tube threads clean, then start the tube by hand and let it turn smoothly. Indian Creek's instruction on its interchange page is blunt: “Never attempt to force a choke that does not screw in easily.” A small gap is normal — Indian Creek says its tubes are designed to sit with a gap of up to 1/32 in between tube and muzzle, so a tube that does not sit flush is not necessarily wrong.

Extended turkey tubes are hand-tight only. 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

The M3500 is a gas-operated 3.5 in semi-auto, which means it will happily feed you more recoil than you want and more range than you have earned. A choke buys pattern density, not marksmanship, and it can quietly take something away up close. The NWTF says it in one line: “With today's ultra-tight chokes, shooting a turkey closer than 20 steps can be tough,” with a description of a quarter-sized pattern at 11 steps and a gobbler that walked away. Its recommended window is 20 to 40 yards. Pattern at 20 and 30 as well as 40.

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 on a body shot. Our guide to where to aim on a turkey shows what that looks like on a strutting, walking or alert bird.

Buyer's guide: your first M3500 turkey tube

The M3500 sells as an affordable 3.5 in semi-auto, and that is exactly the gun people buy as a do-everything shotgun and then take turkey hunting. The factory tube that came in the box was cut for clays and ducks. A dedicated turkey choke is the cheapest meaningful upgrade the gun will 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 actual target.

Four things to settle, in this order:

1. Confirm the thread. M3500, M3000, M3020, P350 → Beretta/Benelli Mobil. If you also own a Benelli SBE 2 or 3, that one is Crio Plus and takes a different tube.
2. Buy the shells. Plated lead points you at Carlson's Extended Turkey or Indian Creek's Strike. TSS points you at Carlson's TSS Turkey, item 38010. Either points you at Kick's.
3. Pick the constriction from the maker's chart and expect to test more than one shell.
4. Pattern it. 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, and that is deliberate. Primos's wallet-friendly Tight Wad is sold by thread rather than by gun and Primos does name a Mobil version, but it publishes no fit list of gun models, so we will not rank it on a page about one specific shotgun. It is the budget pick on our best turkey chokes roundup, where matching the thread is your job. Patternmaster also sells a 12 ga Benelli/Beretta Mobil version of its Code Black Turkey if you want a fifth option to research.

One 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.