The latest rage in turkey loads

By By Otha Barham / outdoors editor
March 12, 2004
You have been sitting hunkered against an oak tree that is ergonomically unsuitable as a back rest, breathing only once every five minutes and ignoring the three mosquitoes drilling your nose, while the big turkey gobbler of your dreams takes his time coming those last few steps that will put him within range.
Your left leg is asleep as is your right shoulder and arm that are holding your seven pound shotgun, which has slowly gained 25 pounds, atop a knee. As a tick makes his way step by tickling step across an embarrassing part of your lower anatomy, a trickle of sweat runs into your shooting eye.
Meanwhile the biggest tom turkey you have ever called to gun struts sharply to the right and you have to twist awkwardly to stay lined up on him, moving as slowly as cold molasses lest he spook. You line up your new fiber optic sights, which are as blurred as the gobbler's head from the burning sweat in your eye. The sights wobble wildly and you squeeze the trigger just before you twist into a human pretzel.
At the shot, you spill over into the leaves, having leaned past the point of no return. And the gobbler leaps into the air and flies away. Specks of blood in the leaves and a couple of feathers tell the sad story. You wounded the fine gobbler but not fatally, and he has flown away where you can only hope he will heal.
Near miss
What happened with your near miss is that you caught the bird with the edge of your shotgun's pattern of shot. Had there been as many pellets per square foot at the pattern's edge as there were at the center, Bingo! Dead tom.
But no. You read somewhere that if you concentrate the shot in your turkey ammunition in the center of your pattern, you can put 254 shot in a turkey's neck and head at 25 yards. (Granted this is a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one.) So you tested several choke tubes and various brands of ammunition and finally got some shells custom loaded so that your patterns blow the center out of a patterning target with just a few strays making it to the edge of the paper.
And then you worry if only 253 shot show up in the sketched turkey neck on the target instead of 254. People, do you know how many shotshell pellets striking a turkey's neck bone at 25 yards will kill the bird? Two! Probably just one, but to avoid any quirk of physics, I'll make it two. If two of any size shot used in loads meant for turkey hunting hit a turkey's neck bone squarely at 25 yards , the bird will become as dead as the granite in Mt. Rushmore.
Where did this current clamor to attain patterns that bunch the shot to the center come from? Was it some writer who aspired to prove shotgunning basics erroneous after these many decades? Was it an anti-hunter?
Flawless shots
I have read in more than one publication that the turkey shotshell pattern should concentrate more shot in the center of the pattern because that is what will strike the turkey's vital neck/head area. These are writers who always hit precisely where they attempt to hit and who move in circles of shooters who only hit turkeys with the center of their patterns . For if these Chosen Ones should ever miss just a few inches with the imperfect sights on most shotguns, and the several dozen variables that affect the shot, their magical patterns would be thin and could result in a wounded bird.
This new idea in turkey taking technology has a name. Hogwash. Put these theorists in the real turkey woods with the influence of an actual strutting tom, thirsty mosquitoes, hungry ticks, rock hard tree trunks, trickling sweat and a heart that is pounding blood right out of their ears and ask them what kind of shotgun pattern they want.
For me, I'll take a spread of shot that is as even as I can get it all the way to the edge of its coverage. And I won't waste time and shotgun shells patterning them at 25 yards. A modified choked .410 will slay a turkey at 25 yards, and if your modern specialty 12 gauge turkey gun won't down every gobbler it shoots at 25 yards, you need to use it as a door stop and get yourself a turkey gun.
Patten the thing at 40 yards. If it will kill a bird that far, move out five more yards and try several shots to know for sure what it will do. If the 40 yard pattern is too thin, check the gun at a closer distance. You may have a 30 or 35 yard gun. If you pattern you will know. And if you find shot holes in the target that are evenly spaced, you can afford to flinch a tad when that tick thrusts in his probe.