The author and his West Virginia hunting guide Eric Cormac admire the old gobbler that ranged the mountains above the New River Gorge. It took a “keyhole” shot to bring the gobbler down.
Turkey guns shoot tight patterns. It’s a given.
Practically all of the conversation about tight patterning shotguns surrounds the idea that a turkey’s vital zone in the head and neck area requires a dense pattern to find a bone to smash. The other part of the equation that seldom sees its way into print is that each season, huge numbers of turkey hunters must “thread the needle” to kill a gobbler. Dense brush and trees between the muzzle and the bird present a maze of obstacles that have to be avoided to make a quick, clean kill.
The best example of this scenario is a bird that I shot the last time I hunted West Virginia. I joined Eric Cormac for a hunt along the New River near Beckley. Eric spends most of his year as a guide for Class VI River Rafters, but during spring gobbler season he’s as scarce as hen’s teeth. During a family fishing trip the previous summer, Eric and I spent hours swapping turkey hunting tales while we cast for smallmouths. Sometime during the trip we made a pact to team up on a West Virginia gobbler the following spring.
By the second week of the following May we met up for a hunt among the mountains along the New River Gorge. Hoping that we would time our hunt to coincide with the period the area’s hens would be on the nest and gobblers more vocal, we set out the first morning to an area Eric had bagged several gobblers over the past several season. Parking on the highest logging road on the mountain, we hiked down the dew-soaked mountain in the dark. Setting up in a prime location, we waited for the mountain’s turkey population to wake up. Finally, a hen started tree calling. I answered with a mouth call and she cranked up the volume. We traded insults, the volume growing with each breath. Sure that a tom couldn’t resist our exchange; Eric and I strained our ears for a gobble. Nothing gobbled at either one of us, leaving two turkey hunters and a lone loud-mouthed hen scratching our collective heads.
We gave up and moved up the mountain. An hour later we even spooked a couple of gobblers from the roost. Discouraged, we hiked back up the mountain only to find two longbeards standing silently in the road 50 yards from the truck. The whole morning these birds could hear our calling but didn’t respond once. Things didn’t get any better for the next two days.
Midmorning of the third day, Eric suggested that we try another spot that he’d killed turkeys in years past. A flock of five gobblers were feeding in a hay field on the side of another mountain five miles from where we had been hunting. We slipped along the fence that ran along up the side of the pasture to keep a low profile. When we arrived at a likely place to call, we leisurely set up and got down to business. A soft call on a slate didn’t do a thing. I hammered out a series of cutts and yelps on a mouth call and was amazed to hear the first gobble in three days of hard hunting.
We jumped up and ran down the ridge, jumped a creek and scrambled into the best position possible. I would have preferred to climb to the top of the ridge where the gobbler called from, but I was afraid he would spot us. I set up in the best possible spot at the base of the ridge facing up the hill. Without an optimal setup, trying to lure a tom down hill into range, I called once with the mouth call and shut up.
I was confused by the sound the gobbler made. It sounded like another hunter playing a sick joke with a Lynch box call–the kind with rubber bands—by shaking the box to simulate a gobble. It was a horrible imitation, but the closest thing to a gobbling turkey I had to work with all week. I wondered if it was a jake, but something told me to wait and see what would show up.
Since the toms weren’t responding to calls, I decided that staying quiet was the best tactic. The bird knew where I was and would have to work to find me. Five minutes later, I smiled beneath my mask as a longbeard walked into sight on the ridge 125 yards above. I knew better than to call to the bird in the open woods. He jumped up on a rock and craned his neck searching for a “hen.” After standing like a stone for two minutes he snapped into strut. Still curious, he folded his fan and started picking his way down the mountain. Ten minutes later he crossed the 50-yard mark, and my confidence grew with each step. When he closed to 35 yards, I knew he was a dead bird walking.
Turkey hunting is fraught with uncertainty, and this bird didn’t disappoint in that regard. He found the only tree between us and closed to 20 yards with me not knowing which side of the tree he would step from. As you might guess, he picked the side of the tree that had a dead limb wedged and leaning against the trunk. I thought he might step clear, but fate told that bird to walk directly toward me with that limb blocking my only shot. I had no choice but to wait until his head was lined up in a clear spot in between the limb and the tree trunk. At 13 steps I had an opening that was about 4 inches wide and put enough of the pattern to nail him to the deck. I stood and walked up to one of the best turkeys I’ve ever killed. This sad-sounding gobbler sported 1 7/16-inch dagger-hooks and an 11-inch beard. He was a big-bodied bird that still weighed nearly 19 pounds at the tail end of the breeding season.
Getting back to the point I made earlier; sometimes you are faced with tough situations where you must place enough of your pattern through tight confines to bag a turkey. For this and other reasons, years ago I switched to using 10-inch circle patterning targets to test the effectiveness of a turkey gun and load.
Prior to using the smaller-sized targets, I relied upon Winchester turkey patterning targets with 30-inch scoring rings. These were holdovers from years of patterning shotguns for birds on the wing. The larger targets were from other targets designed to catch the vast majority of the load and determine the percentage and density of pellets fired at a clay bird. Depending on the percentage of pellets hitting within a 30-inch circle, it also signifies the degree of choke: full, modified, improved, etc. The larger targets also served well to find the core density of the pattern and where the point of impact landed in relation to the point of aim.
Determining point of impact is the end of practical usefulness for the larger turkey targets. When comparing turkey gun pattern effectiveness, I shoot at blank paper at 40 yards and draw a 10-inch circle around the densest portion of the pattern. It does not matter if the pattern is in the center of the spot where you aim, if you have a way to adjust sights to compensate. As long as the center of density stays in the same place from shot to shot, then sight adjustment will line things up later.
When comparing targets, the area of the preferred target is many times smaller than the larger, so fewer pellets need to be counted to derive comparative results. When you are faced with counting the pellet holes on several targets a lot of time can be saved, too. From a practical standpoint, any pellets that fall outside the 10-inch area are wasted when it comes to killing a turkey.
Conversely, using a smaller scoring ring won’t give you enough information to tell much about the gun and load’s performance. Shooting at paper targets and using the outline of a turkey’s head for a scoring ring is a poor way to test a turkey gun. It is neither large enough, nor concentric enough to give statistically comparable data, and it might penalize an otherwise good performer.
My rule of thumb for determining if a gun is performing well is to see if it can put 100 pellets inside a 10-inch ring… every time. That many pellets will assure that a bird will die quickly if your aim is true. It doesn’t matter which size shot you use, as long as it puts 100 pellets in the circle. Of course, smaller shot sizes with higher pellet counts per ounce will put more pellets in the ring than larger sizes. A safe bet is to limit your maximum range for shooting at turkeys at the distance where the pellet count falls below the 100-pellet mark.
Try the smaller targets before next season. You’ll like the ease with which you can test your favorite turkey gun.
Editor’s Note: Learn more about turkey guns and loads from the author’s book, “Turkey Hunter’s Tool Kit: Shooting Savvy™.”
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