My son was recently given a 20 gauge shotgun from his Great Grandfather and is wanting to hunt with it during the turkey youth hunt. I'm curious if the setup is appropriate for turkey hunting. Here's the details of the gun:

-Browning 2000 made in Belgium - assembled in Portugal
-Special Steel 20 GA. Shells - 2 3/4''
-26'' gun barrel
-Improved Modified Choke

Does anyone have any experience turkey hunting with this same gun/setup? Any help/feedback is greatly appreciated.

Better get them close. 20 gauge with a wide pattern doesn't allow for much range.

I don't know if that gun is super valuable or not or if this is feasible.

But you might consider researching if the barrel can be threaded to accept chokes.
Gundoc would more know on that than I would, not certain if he does that procedure.

IM modified barrel of that length would probably melt a turkey out to 45+ yards or so with the right shell. I.E. 2 3/4” TSS. Only one way to find out (shoot it at a patterning board, not at a turkey until you know for sure!).

That's the quickest and easiest proof of concept.

Juggy is on it, a IM on a 20 with #9 TSS is a Turkey masher. I shoot a IM in one of my barrels on my O/U turkey gun. Small shot needs to "breath" a little to maximize the pattern.

This is correct. For whatever reason I just read that as improve cylinder instead of Improved modified.

Correction: The choke is actually an Improved Cylinder NOT Improved Modified. With that said, Semo's comment is accurate. I'm still going to get some 2 3/4'' tss and pattern the gun. Assumming I can find some TSS.....Thank you for the replies.

Improved cylinder should be just fine. That’s what I have in the top barrel of my over/under. It’s plenty good at 40 yards

Brent M---What turkey load works best with your IC?

I guess I'm ignorant on this topic. I've never heard of using an IC on turkey (at least on purpose). But heck, I use a full choke dove, rabbit, and squirrel hunting so maybe I'm not one to ask.

Leave your turkey choke in shooting skeet that’s a blast.
I’d imagine with tss you could shoot anything out to 50yds

Sporting clays with TSS...that’s way outside my tax bracket.

I’ve never shot a tss load ever. But I have shot a lot of skeet with my turkey choke.
If the op buys him sum tss like everyone talks about. Just point and pull

don't mess with a" great gun",carry the boy hunting, and let him shoot a turkey!!

IC will do fine , just wouldn't stretch it out too far.

Hal’s 1 5/8 oz TSS 9’s. I will say that my shotgun has chrome lined barrels and I’ve found that they tend to shoot tighter with TSS. It’s a cheapo Turkish gun and they had the chokes marked backwards. I thought I was shooting factory full but when we mic’d them it turned out to be IC so I started experimenting.... with TSS there was very little difference between F, M, and IC. IC was a little more even so I put it back in.

Did you try any type of “turkey” choke? Curious how much difference in numbers it makes. Interesting that the IC is similar to Full. I have the factory chokes for my m2, I might shoot them all just to see how much, if any difference it makes

Casey i shoot an IC .662 and Hal’s MOA 20 load of 8’s in the bottom barrel. I’ve flipped the selector over and shot a couple of field turkeys with it cause it’s so easy to misjudge distance. It’s bad news. That load is painful to shoot in a 5 lb shotgun

The barrel of the gun is choked. No threads for interchangeable chokes. Also, I’m struggling to find any 2 3/4” turkey loads. Most 20 gauge turkey loads are 3”.