What choke should you use for turkey hunting? The short answer, then the why

Turkey choke vs full choke, in plain words

A choke squeezes the shot column on its way out of the barrel. The more it squeezes, the longer the pellets hold together downrange. Duck and clay shooters want a spread; a turkey hunter is aiming at a head and neck, so they want the opposite: as many pellets as possible inside a circle the size of a saucer, because that is roughly the size of the target (where to aim on a turkey covers the rest of that). It is why the guns and loads hub treats the choke as the first upgrade worth making to a shotgun you already own.

Carlson's publishes the scale everyone argues about, and it settles the question cleanly. These are constrictions, meaning how much tighter than your barrel's bore the tube is, not the number stamped on the side of most turkey tubes.

So: a full choke is not useless on a turkey inside close range, it is simply a looser tube than the job wants. Missouri's Department of Conservation puts the practical version on its turkey hunting equipment page: “The most popular is an extra-full choke, which gives the tightest pattern. A tight pattern is important in order to strike the vital head-and-neck area.”

Constriction by gauge, as the makers publish it

Here is the confusing part, and it trips up almost everyone: the number printed on a turkey tube, 0.660 in or 0.555 in, is usually the exit diameter, the width of the hole at the muzzle. It is not the constriction. To turn one into the other you have to know your barrel's bore. Kick's publishes standard bores of 0.730 in for a Remington 12 ga, 0.743 in for a Browning Invector Plus and 0.775 in for a Mossberg Ultimag, which is why a Mossberg 835 turkey tube looks so much “bigger” than a Remington one and is not looser at all.

Two things follow from that table. First, a smaller number is not automatically better. Second, the useful spread inside one gauge is tiny, a few thousandths of an inch, which is why the load you shoot through the tube matters more than shaving another 0.005 in off the exit.

Carlson's is the one maker in this group that publishes a chart matching exit diameter to shot size. On its choke tube information page it pairs a Winchester/Invector 12 ga barrel with 0.670 in for No. 4 shot, 0.660 in for No. 5 and No. 6, and 0.640 in for card and block shooters, then adds the caveat that matters most: “This chart is to be used as a starting point; there are exceptions for every shotgun and load.” Which shot size to start from in the first place is the subject of what size shot for turkey.

Thread systems: which tube your gun can actually take

Choke tubes are threaded for a barrel, not for a brand name. Get this wrong and the tube will not seat, or worse, it will go in badly. Indian Creek's installation note is worth reading twice: “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.” Never force one.

Three traps are worth saying out loud. A Mossberg 500 and a Mossberg 835 are not the same thread. An 870 may be Rem Choke or Pro Bore, and Carlson's puts the 870 Bone Collector in the Pro Bore group. And Carlson's prints this in capitals on its Winchester/Invector pages: “DOES NOT FIT WINCHESTER SX-2, SX-3, SX-4 or SXP” — those pumps and autos take Invector Plus. When in doubt, open the maker's interchange guide and find your exact model. We have already done that for the two most common first turkey guns in the Mossberg 500 choke picks and the Remington 870 choke picks. Carlson's also notes that it does not make a .410 Remington 870 Pro Bore tube at all.

What to look for in a turkey choke

Five things decide whether a tube is right for you, and all five are printed on the maker's own page. If a maker will not tell you one of them, treat the silence as information.

1. The loads it is rated for. Lead, copper-plated lead, HEVI-Shot and TSS are not interchangeable in a maker's eyes. Kick's names “lead, TSS, or other non-toxic loads.” Carlson's TSS Turkey names Federal Premium Heavyweight TSS and shot sizes 7 to 9. Indian Creek names “all lead and hybrid heavy loads” and refers TSS questions to the shell makers. Patternmaster and JEBS publish no load rating.
2. Your thread, from the maker's own chart. Not a retailer listing title, which is where most wrong-tube stories start.
3. How many exit diameters it comes in for that thread. Kick's offers up to six in the Invector Plus 12 ga thread, and Indian Creek offers two or three in most models. Carlson's, Primos and Patternmaster each offer one, which is simpler and leaves you nowhere to go if the pattern disappoints.
4. What it is made of, and whether it is ported. Carlson's, Kick's and Patternmaster all publish 17-4 PH stainless steel. Primos publishes chrome alloy steel for the Tight Wad and no material for its TSS tube. Indian Creek publishes no material but does publish 30 parallel ports and tool-free installation.
5. Whether the maker helps you use it. Carlson's publishes patterning instructions and a load chart, Indian Creek publishes a nine-step patterning process, and Kick's publishes a choke selector tool. Others publish installation steps only.

Three tubes that meet the bar

Those three are a starting point, not the whole field. The full 12-gauge ranking, including the budget tube and the lead-load specialists, is in our best turkey chokes list; the 20 ga field is in our 20-gauge choke picks; and every tube whose maker names tungsten is in our TSS choke picks.

Why every chart on this page is only a starting point

Two barrels with the same factory choke marking can have different bores, and the same tube will print differently in each. Trulock, which makes chokes and publishes more patterning guidance than most, states it flatly: a choke of a given exit diameter “is usually going to give a different pattern when used in guns of different bore diameters. Take a Beretta at .723 a Remington at .727 a Browning I.P. at .740 and using a .660 in all three guns normally gives three different patterns.”

Which is why the number that matters is not on any of these tables. It is the count of pellet holes in a 10 in circle on a paper target you shot yourself. Mississippi State University Extension's guide to patterning a shotgun for turkey hunting gives the method: 40 yards, a 3 by 3 ft sheet of brown wrapping paper, the gun rested on bags, then “lay the target down and draw a 10-inch circle around the heaviest part of the pattern” and count the holes. It calls 100 holes the standard acceptable count. Our step-by-step version is in how to pattern a turkey gun.

Four ways beginners get this wrong

• Buying by brand instead of by thread. Every maker here sells the same model in six to nineteen different threads. The model name tells you nothing about whether it fits.
• Chasing the smallest number. A tighter exit can shrink the pattern until you miss a close bird. The NWTF's account of why turkey hunters whiff says it directly: “With today's ultra-tight chokes, shooting a turkey closer than 20 steps can be tough,” and at 11 steps the writer's pattern was “the size of a quarter.” Its advice is to keep shots between 20 and 40 yards and to pattern at each distance, because the pattern size changes a great deal between them.
• Running steel shot through a turkey tube. Carlson's: “Do Not Use Any Steel Shot Larger Than #4, Slugs, Sabots, Rifled Slugs, or 00/000 Buckshot.” Primos and Patternmaster ban steel outright in theirs. If the same gun goes duck hunting, check the barrel before every season.
• Installing it and never shooting it. A choke is a change to the gun. Until you have patterned it, you do not know where it hits or how far it is good for.