My Wilson 870 with screw in choke shoots slugs and #1 FC best with C choke, 8 pellet 00 FC best with IC choke, and 9 pellet 00 FC best with Mod choke.
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Data point of one: my 870 is old, like 1960 vintage and it fame with a 28" modified choked barrel ($180 on a used gun rack locally, prolly due to 2 3/4" chamber)
The modified barrel does not pattern as tight or evenly the FFC #1 buck load as the 18.5" cylinder bore barrel I bought for it. Not a major difference but a bit more ragged and wider at 15 and 25 yards.
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If you are use removable choke tubes, you really should be installing them with anti-seize or choke tube grease, and use the proper choke wrench. This will prevent the fear of choke tubes coming loose and becoming secondary projectiles as you mention in bullet three.
My experience does not correlate with yours regarding fouling and accuracy degradation as you mention in bullet four. Although I might seem counterintuitive, in my experience at the patterning board, I have not found that longer chokes or choke tubes pattern better than short ones. This goes from Tula chokes to screw-in chokes to choked barrels. The patterning board tends to reveal the differences. I have found straight rifling, as Briley uses in their tubesets, does improve patterns, because it reduces wad rotation in the barrel. More of a birdshot issue than a buckshot issue. Buckshot patterns are more dependent on wad and buffer than birdshot.
You should pattern the gun with your choke tubes. If you experience changing POI as you mention in bullet six, you have concentricity issues that should be addressed. This discussion assumes properly machined barrels and chokes.
Last edited by Trigger; 11-05-2018 at 12:36 PM.
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I realize this is an older thread, but it hits on my subject.
My Benelli M4 came with a modified choke only. Having read posts online including a response somewhere from Benelli, slugs are not be used in conjunction with a modified choke. I thought that was weird as the Benelli M4 only comes with the modified choke.
I bought a Briley IC choke as I want the flexibility of running either Federal LE133 8 pellet 00 buck (2.75" pre Flite Control) OR Federal LE127 RS (2.75" 1 oz slug). I believe both are reduced recoil rounds.
I spent some time yesterday sighting in the red dot on the M4 using the Briley IC choke and the Federal LE133 00 buck load and the pattern was quite large at 25 yards, probably around 24 inches. I found that to be larger than what I'd hoped for at that distance. My Benelli M1 Super 90 with the factory IC choke would pattern at roughly 10 inches that same distance.
I put one slug thru it at 25 yards to see where it would hit and it hit inside the black of 6 inch center (about 2 inches low and about 2 inches right).
I'd like to see a tighter pattern with the Federal 00 buck out of the M4, but I'm hesitant to use the original modified choke in case I need to run the Federal LE127 rifled slugs thru it.
What do you guys think? OK to run the modified choke with those slugs?
Last edited by Exiledviking; 10-16-2021 at 07:36 PM.
So do I.
My "fool's errand/utility shotgun" quest convinced me that a screw-in choke was the only way to be able to run a kaleidoscope of loads successfully (though it became bewildering), but a fixed choke was administratively and procedurally more sensible for SD/HD. Since I was already done with hunting by that time, a fixed IC barrel was not the handicap it might have been if I was planning to pot turkeys. Nothing since then has changed my mind.
That being said, I now sort of regret gifting away an 870P barrel which had been reworked for RemChoke tubes. It wasn't taking up much space and it had proven fairly versatile, although with some tube/load combinations the rifle-type sights were distractingly not "set and forget"... I ended up converting the rear sight to an express-type shallow "V" before playing the philanthropist, but the front bead was still a bit too fine.
Having both a fixed choke defensive barrel and a choke-tubed "hunting/utility" barrel is a decent solution, with the fixed barrel being the "under the bed and ready to go" BITN/SHTF/TEOTWAWKI/OMG configuration.
gn
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