If you’re going turkey hunting for the first time, you may gasp when you see the prices you have to pay for a good turkey load.
Or, maybe you’ve turkey hunted before but can’t bring yourself to pay $5 per shell when you have a box of 4s laying around. If you’re thinking along these lines of thought, you might just want to read this article.
A few years ago, I tested most of the popular turkey loads at various yardages with different guns and chokes. Before that, I had always used 2s for turkeys. It seemed crazy to pay $20 to $25 for a box of five shells. Boy, did I have my eyes opened up. All turkey shells are not created equal.
I was reminded of that fact today when I went out shooting some Hevi-Shot turkey loads. In past tests, I’ve always shot shells from four to five different manufacturers. Anymore, I’m too embarrassed for them. The first comparison I did years ago, Brand X had 17 BB's in the zone and Hevi-Shot had 119.
Here are the parameter’s I used in today’s shooting.
- I did my shooting at 40 yards.
- Used a Mossberg Pro Series Waterfowler Model 930 with a Trulock PHWIN12660 choke.
- Birchwood Casey targets.
- 3-inch Hevi-Shot Magnum Blend (5, 6, 7).
For whatever reason, before I conducted the test today, I shot two shots with my Mossberg Modified Choke. The HS triple blend (5, 6, 7) landed 194 BB’s in the upper body. Unbelievable! Their Triple Beard blend put 123. When my non-hunting daughter saw the target, she said, “Daddy, you don’t want to blow them up that bad do you?"
Hands down, Hevi-Shot owns the market on turkey loads. You can see why I don’t do comparisons against other manufacturers anymore — it’d just embarrass them.
But before we go farther, don’t delude yourself. You can’t just buy a popular load and call it good. You need to shoot a target and learn where your gun is hitting and make necessary adjustments.
If you shoot a target and your gun is shooting low and you only placed 20 BBs in the kill zone, that doesn’t mean the load is bad. It only means your gun is off sight. The goal of testing a load is to determine which shell has the best pattern. Where your gun is hitting and the amount of BBs in the kill zone are two different topics all together. Make sense?
Next important topic is your choke. I use a Trulock PHWIN12660 choke. You want a tight choke, which means you’ll have to aim at a body part almost like when hunting with a rifle. Even though you’d like to aim at the head, I recommend aiming about 6 to 8 inches below the head.
Here’s why. If you aim at the head, that’s the center of your pattern so half the pellets shoot over the top of his head. If you aim 6 to 8 inches below his head, the main pattern will be congregated from his head to his heart.
Then it gets a little deeper. Notice the target in the pic. I aimed a little lower and had 116 BB’s in the upper bird. On the right, I aimed up at the head. Of course Because of the head/neck being smaller, I only landed 60 BBs, but more were in the neck and head. So decide what you favor.
Next, should you mount a scope or a good set of sights on your turkey gun to really get it pinpointed? Most people can’t afford a good turkey gun and a good waterfowl gun, so it ends up that most of us use our favorite shotgun for all hunts.
So as you can see, figuring out which shell to shoot your turkey with is only one piece of the puzzle. Sighting in your shotgun is the other part.
Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.
