Deer, Turkey Gun Setup

[Mikey M]

I'm trying to pull double duty with my 12gauge mossberg turkey gun (24" barrel with full choke) to hunt both turkey and deer.

Which leads me to a few questions:

-Is shooting slugs through my un-rifled barrel a good way to go for deer? (obviously I would remove the choke) or should I purchase a rifled barrel?

- also could I pull double duty with a decent red dot scope?

[Pygmy]

You can buy a rifled choke tube for your smoothbore barrel...This might give good groups with either foster style rifled slugs or sabots. That would be my first choice.

You can also shoot foster style rifled slugs ( like Rem Sluggers) through an IC or Mod choke tube and perhaps get decent groups.

Do NOT shoot anything through your barrel without some type of choke tube installed..This might damage the threads.

The red dot should work fine with both barrels. If you are lucky, you may not have to adjust when you switch from shot loads to slugs. Then again, you might have to re-sight in when you change over. You can only determine this by shooting from the bench. Sight it in with slugs FIRST...Then shoot some patterns with shot loads. If you are lucky, it MIGHT pattern shot loads to the same point of aim as your slugs.

[ants]

If you current turkey barrel only has a bead sight, you may want to invest in a slug barrel, or better yet just drill & tap your receiver ( if it isn't already) and mount a decent scope to it. Then just go with what ever slug compatible choke tube you want, IC or rifled tube…...

[ny hunter]

NEVER SHOOT ANYTHING WITHOUT SOME KIND OF CHOKE......I have and rifled barrel for my 870 and a smooth bore with interchangeable chokes for everything else..If you can find a rifled barrel that would be the way to go..

[Elmo]

I tried a few rifled slugs out of my Mossy 500 with an smooth bore 18" home defense barrel.  I could not get any kind of decent groupings.

[MACHINIST]

Try shooting some foster slugs from the smoothbore.I had a old 20 gauge mossberg that would throw a 3-3.5 inch group if I scoped it at 100 yards all day long with cheap reminton sluggers.That gun was a 26 or 28 inch vent rib bird barrel

[Mikey M]

Well here's the thing, I'm trying to see if I can get away with using my shotgun for a season or two in lieu of buying a bolt action rifle. My shotgun has front and back fiber optic sights and is drilled and tapped for scope mounts. So I need to weigh the price of a decent scope, new choke and possibly a rifled barrel to the cost of a new rifle.

Its pretty close when I break it down, now I just have to convince the old ball n chain that we need to buy a new rifle haha

[Mikey M]

But I don't think it would hurt for me to grab a box or two of slugs and a modified choke and see if I can shoot a decent group with open sights