How Effective Are Rifled Choke Tubes?

[Speedo66]

Curious if anybody has any experience with rifled choke tubes? I've seen some that are a few inches long, wondering if that's sufficient to impart reasonable accuracy? Are they the equal to a full rifled barrel?

Are they effective with the sabot slugs?

 

[Jason_W]

My experience with them is that they are not effective in stabilizing sabot slugs.

They do improve accuracy with plumbata and Foster slugs, but not enough to justify the cost of the tube.

That said, every shotgun is its own animal and you may find a tube)slug combo that's amazing.

 

[entropy]

They seemed to help with Foster slugs; never tried sabots with one, I always used a fully rifled barrel for those.

 

[PapaG]

Shot quite a few SST, and Fed Truball slugs through several rifled choke tubes made by Rem, Hastings, and one other that escapes me right now. The Hastings did best, probably because it was five inches long and had some chance of imparting spin. I don't think the standard flush muzzle tubes have much chance of overcoming the eighteen inches or more of full velocity and doing much gripping of the sabot. A few recovered sabots showed straight shredded exteriors as opposed to great rifling engraved from a rifled barrel.
I have gone to a 220 Savage and given away an expensive collection of rifled tubes. I got, most of the time, equal results from an ic smoothbore and Fosters as I did with sabots and tubes.
Your experience may vary.
I have five slug moulds, foster, sabot and my own hybrid, and have loaded and shot almost all proprietary slugs available for reloading. If I have to shoot a smoothbore, the original Brennekes or Truballs are my choice.

 

[entropy]

I concur. I have several boxes of each, though I like Winchester PDX1 buck and ball for HD.

 

[cdb1]

Not very effective IMO.

 

[Speedo66]

Thanks to all for posting their experiences.