Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting 20 ga choke tube restriction recommendation?

Im looking at trying my 20 gauges for turkey hunting and need input on choke tube restriction...

Gun 1 - Browning BPS Upland pump
Gun 2 - Franchi Affinity 26 inch

Shells: Hevi-shot (required for the public land I hunt)
Future: something that may work with TSS.


What restriction should I try for my Hevi-shot?

Thanks in advance.

HD

My 20 gauge is an 870 and I've tried .550, 555, 562 and 570 chokes. My gun much prefers the .570 with Hevi13 6's and Federal HW 7's. The .555 did the best with the H13 7's but I never got the numbers I wanted from them so I stayed with the Federals.


I use a Colonial Arms .570

Appropriate choke constrictions vary with design. There is no hard and fast rule because of how much choke design affects patterns. One choke might need to be .562 whereas another might need to be .581.

Choke designs that tend to work well with the particular style of wads in Hevi or Federal TSS loads are different. If you choke for Hevi now, your choke is less likely to work with Federal later. You want to pick the load before shopping chokes.

Call a choke maker who has a choke specific for the load you pick and will swap chokes if the first one you try does not do as well as they said it would. SumToy, Indian Creek and Trulock do. Some retailers will.

If it were me, and I were not loading my own like I do, I'd track down some Federal TSS #9s and try them with the factory full. I'd bet a dollar that would work.

As mentioned above, pick your load and then pattern at the ranges you expect to actually shoot a bird. You can only determine what is best or works to your satisfaction by use of a patterning board using your gun, choke, and load. I use a different choke when I'm hunting in the woods than I do hunting a field as the range in the woods may be under 20 yards while the field may be 40 yards or more. I much prefer a dinner plate sized pattern at 20 yards than one baseball sized at close range as it allows for a little less precise shot placement which can be very important at very close range.

I use a 12 ga but my wife, friend, and grandson use a 20 ga for turkeys. In the woods the most used choke is Improved Cylinder (.010") and for more open areas an Improved Modified. (.023") as measured from actual bore diameter. The same chokes in a different barrel may have a slightly different constriction due to manufacturing tolerances as well as other variances due to manufacture. With old Remington Hevi-shot loads of 4s and 6s the mentioned chokes have worked well for us.