Suppress Your Shotguns: Sporting Clays with Silent Scatterguns

Photos by Tom Marshall and Match Grade Media

Suppressors have exploded in popularity over the last few years due to lower costs, relaxed regulation, and improved technology. But while rifles and pistols are seeing suppressors added right and left, the shotgun has been largely left out of this revolution. 

This isn’t for no reason, in part because of shotgunners themselves; it’s true that traditionalists never much liked silencers anyway, and many trap shooters remain steadfast in that camp. It’s also true that by their very nature, shotguns present some unique technical challenges when it comes to designing a silencer that is effective without being overly unwieldy. 

One issue is that shotguns have larger bores. Gas likes to move in the path of least resistance, and we’re told preventing flow through the nearly ¾-inch hole of a 12GA can be quite a chore. Another part of the problem is the design of the shotshell itself. A normal centerfire round consists of a brass case, a primer at the base, gun powder in the middle, and a projectile up top. When the primer is struck, it ignites the powder which in turn launches the projectile. A shotshell has a little more going on. 

Most of the time there will only be a metal base, the bulk of the body being a plastic hull (with older examples constructed of cardboard). There’s still a primer to ignite the powder, but instead of a bare projectile, the payload is held inside a cup called the wad. There are a great many wad designs, but all of them are intended to separate the shot (be it birdshot, buckshot, or slug) from the powder and hold the everything together until the assembly exits the barrel. Many wads petal and expand upon exiting, and there can be other components inside a shotshell like separate gas seals, cards, and inserts. 

It takes a great deal of effort to engineer a silencer that doesn’t instantly get gummed up by wadding and other innards. Still, we’ve seen a great many new shotgun cans come out in recent years and set out to test them. This guide isn’t all-encompassing, but a comparison of what you can expect to see on the market and some things for your consideration. 

MOUNTING

Before we went to the range, we first had to mount everything up. Shotguns are a strange beast when it comes to silencer mounting, but the good news is that almost all modern shotguns can do it — you just might not be able to do it for all suppressors. There are companies that offer threading services for the scatterguns that aren’t equipped as well. 

Where rifles and pistols are threaded on the outside of the barrel, most shotguns use threading on the inside of the barrel for choke tubes (with exceptions for guns like Saiga-12s and similar). A shotgun choke is a tapered device made to control the spread and pattern of the pellets/shot from a given shell, and they come in different sizes. While almost all new shotguns these days are made to accept chokes, what type of choke they accept normally falls into one of a few major categories: Beretta/Benelli Mobil, Benelli Crio, Browning Invector, Mossberg Accu-Choke, and Rem Choke are the most common mounts and cover nearly all modern domestic shotguns. Not all suppressors support all choke patterns, so you’ll want to double-check this before buying one.

If you have something uncommon, like KGS or Saiga, the options are more limited. The good news is that some of the silencers listed in this article support them, and also some companies like Silencer Central and JK Armament offer custom threading services.

Like quick-disconnect devices for rifle cans, mounts can be costly — and not every manufacturer automatically bundles one. YHM and Banish include a mount with the cost of the suppressor, and extras are sold separately on their sites. JK Armament and Silencer Co. are sold separately, so you should add the cost of a mount/choke adapter to the base price. 

THE SETUP

The options available for shotgun suppressors really aren’t a long list. We tested six models from four brands that basically cover three major designs. Two of these were tested in both 12- and 20-gauge. Sadly, no .410 bore suppressor was available at the time of writing, but we’re told that YHM is working on one soon.

For the test subjects, Beretta supplied several A300 shotguns and SDS Arms sent in a Spandau S2, all were equipped with Vortex red dots (because we’re not bead sight bird shooters). 

AmmunitionToGo.com sent us over 1,000 shells to shuck through them. 

What do you do when you have a thousand shells, a handful of shotguns, and stuff to shoot? You send out the Bat-Signal and meet the boys at the Sporting Clays range. Tucson Trap & Skeet Club in Southern Arizona didn’t have a hand in the production of this article, but they do have five sporting clays courses that are active year-round, which made a perfect proving ground. Heck of a facility. 

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

Rifle and pistol suppressors can use just about any ammo, and most suppressors are rated for a very wide range of barrel lengths and ammo type. For the reasons we already discussed regarding shell construction, shotgun suppressors have a lot more restrictions. 

First, each of these suppressors has different restrictions for barrel length and muzzle velocity, so check that info out. Second, all shotgun suppressors have some limitations when it comes to what you can run. While all are rated for lead shot, and some are rated for heavy-shot like steel (except with a full-choke), bismuth, and tungsten, none of them are compatible with rifled slugs or shells with “non-typical wad types” (such as Federal Flitecontrol or Hornady Versa-Tite).

The rules are different for each can, so take a closer look. For general use, the details won’t hold you back. 

But if you want to get deep into the weeds, and shotgun shooters like their tall weeds, it’s important to know what your suppressor can and can’t do safely. Always consult the owner’s manual for full details.

Silencer Central Banish SGN 12 TI [EDITOR’S CHOICE]

• Length: 8.55 inches
• Weight: 17.6 ounces
• URL: silencercentral.com
• MSRP: $1,218
• Mount Included: Yes

Restrictions:

• No barrel length restrictions
• Compatible with lead, steel*, bismuth, and tungsten shot
• *Non-compatible ammunition:
  • Shotgun shells with non-typical wad types 
  • Slugs without wads / rifled slugs
  • No steel shot when using full chokes.

Across the board, our favorite shotgun suppressor. 

The weird shape of the Banish 12 makes it perfect for shooting with a red dot or a bead sight and doesn’t interfere with your sight picture at all. Because the Banish 12 is wide, it has a lot of volume for great suppression without adding a ton of length. At 8.55 inches long, it provides noticeably more suppression than even the longest modular cans tested elsewhere in this article. Titanium keeps the weight down enough that it doesn’t make the shotgun horrible to hold, even when it’s on a 28-inch barrel. There are only three choke options, but most people don’t need more than Imp, Mod, and Full.

The deep tone, light weight, ease of use, and rock-solid mounting made the Banish 12 a clear winner for us.

With an MSRP of $1,218, the Banish 12 is technically the most expensive we tested, but since it comes with a mount, you’re out the door for less than some others. Silencer Central, being the manufacturer and dealer, does have the added benefit of getting the Banish 12 sent directly to your door without any extra cost. 

JK ARMAMENT 195 SGX 12GA / 195 SGX 20GA

• Length: 3.375 to 12.2 inches (configurable)
• Weight: 4.3 to 22.4 ounces
• URL: jkarmament.com
• MSRP: $1,095

Restrictions:

• 12 Gauge – 1-3/4” “Mini” Shells: No Minimum Barrel Length
• 12 Gauge – 2-3/4” Shells: 6 inches
• 12 Gauge – 3” Shells: 9 inches
• 12 Gauge – 3-1/2” Shells: 12 inches
• 20 Gauge – All Size Shells: 14.5 inches
• 12 & 20 Gauge shot type – “High-density shot such as Hevi-Shot, Federal TSS, or similar tungsten or bismuth offerings are under long-term evaluation and are presently not recommended.”

JK Armament made a name for themselves by manufacturing tubeless silencers with extreme modularity. Their “killer app” has always been the ability to select exactly how long or short you want the suppressor to be (or put another way, how quiet or loud you deem acceptable). Instead of a silencer with one base and one extension, essentially every baffle is an individual extension, with the sky being the limit. 

This design has been copied by a great many other manufacturers since, and that’s certainly not for no reason. This design philosophy continues with their 195 SGX shotgun silencers, which they’ve been producing for several years now. We brought along both a 12- and 20-gauge model. 

Behind the gun, the tone for both the 20- and 12-gauge were good, but on the “tinny” side of things. In terms of size, the subjective feel of the sound didn’t change much unless you were on the maximum or the minimum end of the baffle configuration. 

The pros of the SGX are also its cons. While the individual baffle segments make it easy to customize the size of the suppressor, it also gives you a lot of threads to keep tight when they want nothing more than to come loose at every opportunity. Nothing rattled off while shooting, but almost every stand required tightening down at least one set of threads somewhere on the can. It gets annoying very quickly, so give it a good crank when you find the length you want. 

Aluminum makes for a lightweight suppressor on the end of the gun, and it can be configured to be very small, but it’s not as strong as the others on this list. Due to that, JK’s SGX suppressors come with the most restrictions on barrel length and shot type.

Overall, the SGX works and it runs. 12 or 20, these aren’t bad cans, but the downsides of the design and material might not make up for the upsides. 

Yankee Hill Machine Co

VICTRA-12 12GA 

• Length: 6 to 12 inches (configurable)
• Weight: 13.5 to 25 ounces
• URL: yhm.net
• MSRP: $980
• Mount Included: Yes

VICTRA-20 20GA

• Length: 4 to 10 inches (configurable)
• Weight: 12 to 22 ounces
• URL: yhm.net
• MSRP: $890
• Mount Included: Yes

Restrictions (For Both)

• 7 1/2” + barrel – 2 3/4” shell max.
• 10” + barrel – 3” shell max.
• 16” + barrel – 3 1/2” shell max.
• “High-density shot such as Hevi-Shot, Federal TSS, or similar tungsten or bismuth loads, as well as slugs, are not to be used with a full or turkey choke.”

The most affordable cans on the range with us, we liked the Victra a lot. Great tone, good suppression, and nothing comes loose during shooting. For the actual shooting experience, top marks all around from all the shooters.

What we didn’t love was trying to change chokes, and the fact that the different rods for the Victra are sold separately. 

To change chokes on both models of Victra, the front cap has to be removed before threading the choke backward out of the cap. This makes the choke very secure in the suppressor, but if you want to change chokes on the fly, it’s annoying, requires two tools (Allen key for the rods, choke tube tool for the choke), and hard to do if you’ve been shooting already. If all you are going to do is pick one choke and go with it, it’s not a problem.

Good news/bad news: The Victra has the best selection of chokes out of all the suppressors we tried — five size options: Improved Cylinder, Modified, Full, Turkey, and Skeet. We just wish changing chokes was easier.

The YHM Victra can be customized for size. Thankfully, the Victra doesn’t use individual threaded sections, so it doesn’t come loose, but to take advantage of the different sizes requires extra assembly rods that YHM sells separately. A full set of the three extra sizes runs $125. 

YHM includes one mount with every shotgun, so the MSRP is the true pricing.

BUT WAIT, WHY?

Besides the objective fact that guns with suppressors are just more awesome, there are some practical reasons to suppress a shotgun as well. But they might not be what you’d expect. In many books, shotguns are best for two things: birds and home defense. Birds aren’t limited to just winged dinosaurs anymore — we’ll extend the definition to clays and drones as well. 

There are a lot of flavors of bird hunting, from doves to ducks, geese to upland. The style and method of hunting things with wings are as varied as the animals. One feature many of them have in common is quick reaction shots, and a lot of hunters who don’t wear ear protection or who half-ass their ear protection. A suppressor alone won’t make 3.5-inch shells for geese hearing safe, but it cuts a lot of the noise, and at least lessens the damage done to your hearing. 

Suppressors don’t just protect your hearing; they also help protect the hearing of anyone around you. Friends and family who join in on the clays range or in the dove field benefit just as much as you do. And if that doesn’t convince you, think of your dog. While hearing protection is available for man’s best friend, it’s not common to see it being used outside of MIL/LE working dogs. Using a suppressor will help Ol’ Blue keep his hearing even into old age. 

For defense, a suppressor is a must-have for many. Again, it protects your hearing and the hearing of those in the home. If the worst happens, you want to be able to communicate with your family and emergency services after a shooting. 

SUPPRESSORS WILL RUIN YOUR SWING!

Shotguns aren’t my life’s true passion, and speaking with some amazing shotgun shooters before starting this project, they all said basically the same thing: Adding a suppressor will ruin the balance of the shotgun and ruin the way it swings.

In fairness, they weren’t entirely wrong. But they weren’t entirely right either. Adding weight to the end of a shotgun changes how it balances and feels in your hands. That is unavoidable. How much that actually matters is probably overblown and more a matter of training. A lot of iron sight shooters try red dots for 10 minutes, hate it, and spend years bemoaning how red dots are horrible.

Likewise, the shotgun experts we spoke with had decades of experience without a suppressor, and minutes, at best, with one. With that in mind, it’s no wonder they hated it and felt like their aim and swing were ruined.

But in our testing, we’re not expert shotgun shooters. We don’t have tens of thousands of shells’ worth of experience with one shotgun’s swing. To us, the balance was fine, and the suppressor wasn’t what held us back on the sporting clays course. Longer barrels and heavier suppressors make more of a difference when it comes to adding a suppressor, but that’s something you can account for when choosing a suppressor and shotgun for you.

If you’re new to shotguns, getting a suppressor will feel different but entirely manageable as you learn how to use it best.

If you’re an old hand at shotguns, adding a suppressor will feel a lot different and take some getting used to. But with enough practice, the difference will probably be negligible outside of gun games and competition. 

PATTERNS

Because shotgun suppressors mount using the existing choke threads on your shotgun, many shotgun silencers integrate their own chokes on the end of the can. These do not conform to standard patterns, and each is the design of the brand that made it. 

That said, the differences between each were negligible in testing. Testing the patterns of all the chokes of all the suppressors on all the shotguns quickly proved to be uninteresting — and also unhelpful. Anyone who has ever spent time patterning a gun understands that different loads like different chokes, so you need to go and test it yourself. For example, YHM’s full choke performed the same at 20 yards and 40 yards as the JK full choke did at respective ranges, and the Banish full choke was more of the same. Side by side, choke for choke, it wasn’t discernible which choke made what pattern. The size mattered, but who made it and for what suppressor did not.

These results repeated themselves without the suppressors as well. Beretta factory chokes versus the respective suppressor chokes performed the same. While it made for a dull day of testing, this is the ideal result since it makes it easier for the user.

LOOSE ROUNDS

Having spent a lot of time with these shotgun suppressors, it’s understandable why purists turn their nose up at them. It’s totally fair to say that adding a suppressor to your shotgun will make it heavier, balance differently, might affect your zero, and definitely change your swing. But suppressors still bring the benefits they offer on rifles and pistols to shotguns — your gun is a lot quieter. 

Suppressors aren’t just for looks or just for fun. They’re safety devices like eye protection, gloves, a good pair of boots, or earplugs. Should you rush to add one to your competition trap gun? Probably not. But adding it to your duck gun might make you and your dog a whole lot happier.