Reviews MAC Agency Tradesman 1014 Review: Optimized Turkelli Tactical Shotgun David Lane September 24, 2025 Join the Conversation At RECOIL, we review every product fairly and without bias. Making a purchase through one of our links may earn us a small commission, and helps support independent gun reviews. Read our affiliate policy. Find out more about how we test products. If you’ve been paying attention to the gun industry in the past few years, it’s impossible to have missed the surge in Turkish firearms. Except this isn’t like the generations of Turkish guns that have hit our shores before. Instead, these actually work. Not only do they work, but they run like sewing machines. Arguably, these are some of the best examples of bang-for-your-buck on the market. The MAC 1014 is exactly one of those guns. In fact, it’s good enough that Agency Arms started using the MAC 1014 as the base model for their upgrade package. Hearing that at SHOT 2025, it was clear it had to be put to the test. Tradesman 1014 SPECS Action Type: Semi-Auto Operation: Gas Regulated Piston Caliber: 12 Gauge – 2 3/4 – 3″ Frame/Receiver – Slide Finish: Anodized Sights: Adjustable – Rear Ghost Ring – White Blade Front Optics Ready/Cut: Picatinny Rail Capacity (w/Included Mags): 5 + 1 Barrel Length: 18.5″ Threaded: Benelli®/Mobil Barrel Finish: Chromate OAL: 39.8″ Height: 8.3″ Width: 2.6″ Weight (Unloaded): 8.3 lbs. PROS Upgrades out of the box High-quality shotgun, budget price Agency Arms stamp of approval CONS Social stigma UPGRADES The Tradesman has some awesome upgrades from Agency Arms, including the AA bolt, oversized charging handle, oversized bolt release, new lifter, enhanced loading port and a ported factory barrel. Best of all, the upgrades include a new handguard complete with M-LOK. This upgrade package from Agency Arms typically costs $1,700, and you must provide the shotgun. While the base Tradesman is a nice step up from the standard MAC 1014, I added two more upgrades on top of it to really optimize my scatter gun. First was a Shell Tactical +2 tube to replace the factory faux tube. More ammo is more better, so it’s generally advisable to ditch limited factory tubes ASAP. Shell Tactical +2 is a fairly cheap and an important upgrade. Second, Mesa Tactical Urbino Pistol Grip Stock with limb saver and cheek riser. While not entirely required, the Mesa Tactical stock is flat-out better than OEM Benelli or MAC stock. Slightly shorter LOP and a limb saver make long days of sending lead downrange a lot more enjoyable. ON THE RANGE One range session was spent with the OEM MAC stock just to see how it felt. It’s fine. It’s a clone of the Benelli M4 stock, and that stock really isn’t anything to write home about. Once I felt I had done my journalistic duty by giving it a try, I ditched it like a bad date and installed the Mesa Tactical Urbino. This is an instant upgrade well worth the money and effort to install. Quite simply, it was a major improvement. Reliability has been exactly what I expected, but not perfect. The MAC 1014 doesn’t like cheap birdshot, but that’s not unexpected since the Benelli M4 doesn’t really like cheap birdshot either. Because of the gas system, you need a minimum amount of power to make things work. Cheapo birdshot isn’t it. My chrono doesn’t work great with birdshot, so it’s hard to give solid numbers. But going off the box velocity– just about anything 7-1/2 birdshot at ~1,150 FPS didn’t cycle well in the MAC. Short stroke or failure to feed about every 3 or 4 rounds. However, 7-1/2 birdshot over ~1,250 FPS on the box ran perfectly. Every flavor of buckshot ran without issue. No. 4, 00, 000, defensive, cheap–zero malfs of any type across several hundred rounds. MAC quotes a 100-round break-in period, but this didn’t seem to make a huge difference for me. The slower birdshot might work slightly better, but it’s still not reliable. If I don’t want to run malf clearing drills, I’m sticking to birdshot over 1,250 FPS. THE $1,000 QUESTION The first reaction most people have to seeing this gun and learning about it is, why pay around $1,000 for something that's normally a ~$350 shotgun. Upgrades, that’s why. Agency Arms has long offered this upgrade package for Benelli shotguns. You provide the Benelli M4 and send Agency Arms $1,700, and they’ll pimp your shoty. Getting literally the same upgrade package for less than $700 is an absolute steal. Do you need it? That’s harder to answer. A good buddy of mine reviewed the MAC 1014, and it’s been chugging along ever since with zero issues. It’s run so long and so well that the gun has been rewarded by being SBS’d and a suppressor added for quiet fun times. Walker Defense Research NILE M-LOK Rails While the Agency Arms upgrades are nice, none of them really affect the durability or reliability of the MAC 1014. Functional upgrades like M-LOK and being easier to load, especially if you want to quad-load, and a ported barrel are major improvements — but they don’t add durability or reliability. If you want a cheap shotgun that runs well, the base MAC 1014 might be a better buy. If you want a cheap shotgun you can upgrade, I would say the Tradesman does 95 percent of the upgrades out of the box for less than you’ll spend buying parts yourself. Plus, the ported barrel is a huge plus. Me not being a real shotgun guy, this was one of the rare times that I didn’t want a project gun. Having almost all of the work done for me, and it still being an affordable firearm, was perfect. LOOSE ROUNDS There are probably minor points to the MAC Tradesmen that surpass my palate. But in my admittedly less educated opinion, this shotgun covers everything I wanted right out of the box. The Mesa stock is a nice improvement, and I’m glad for it, but even the OEM stock wasn’t bad. The downside? This gun definitely suffers socially from the poor examples that have come before it. I’m no stranger to hitting the range with guns and gear that are budget-priced and not the highest quality, but it’s rare that anyone around me actually notices or cares. But once word gets around that it’s a Turkish shotgun, the pitchforks come out. While there is a long list of good shotguns made in Turkey, the firearm community only remembers the no-name fly-by-night brands that list “M4 clones” or bullpups for $100 on Gunbroker. Because of the reputation those shotguns have gained among the community, it’s hard to convince people that not all Turkish shotguns are the same. The Tradesman has a hill to climb to prove to people that this isn’t like the other Turkish clones that have come before it. But if any shotty can dispel a decades-long stigma, the Tradesman can. Why you can trust RECOIL Since our founding in 2012, RECOIL remains the premier firearms lifestyle publication for the modern shooting enthusiast. We deliver cutting-edge coverage of guns, gear, accessories and technology. We go beyond basic reviews, providing no B.S. buyer’s guides, hands-on testing and expert analysis on everything from firearms and survival equipment to watches and vehicles. Our reviewers are the backbone of our operation and come from diverse shooting backgrounds: Former law enforcement, military veterans, competitive shooters, seasoned hunters and plain old firearms enthusiasts. Furthermore, we’re not just gun experts, but dedicated journalists who adhere to the strictest standards of our profession. 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