It seems like every couple of seasons I have a gobbler that haunts me. As I write this, I’m preparing to head out the door again to try and kill an almost unkillable tom. This old paranoid limb-hanger could be the love child of Pablo Escobar and Osama Binladin. He seldom roosts in the same tree, won’t gobble at flyup and gobbles less and less every day. He’s in that maddening stage of only gobbling a couple of times a day, and never from the same spot.
As if the hunting wasn’t hard enough already, I decided to take things up a notch in difficulty by hunting with a 20 gauge. The past season’s turkey surprise was Weatherby’s new Element Turkey autoloader 20 gauge turkey gun. By the second week of the season all of the dumb 2-year-olds hanging out around my farm already went to turkey heaven, so I dedicated myself to killing the old warrior tom I’d been hunting for the past several springs. This gobbler and I had created a history over the past several seasons. He had to be at least nine years old, which put him in the Methuselah class for wild turkey longevity. (For the unfamiliar, Methuselah was Noah’s father and lived to the ripe old age of 969.)
Gun Details
Built around their time-proven Weatherby Element action, this operating system harnesses the inertia of the shotgun’s recoil to smoothly eject and reload rather than having to redirect combustion gasses back into the gun. The result is a much cleaner and more maintenance-free shotgun. I’m pretty familiar with and rely on recoil-operated shotguns, after a 4-year stint working for a gunmaker who specializes in the design. To say that I’m a fan of the new Weatherby’s engineering would be an understatement.
The Weatherby Element Turkey’s factory-equipped choke is an extended Full that is fluted for tool-free removal and installation, while three flush chokes and a choke tube wrench are also included (constrictions provided are Improved Cylinder, Modified and Full). Built to run modern 2 ¾- and 3-inch magnum loads, the Element handles well diminutive dove loads or longer turkey loads with ease. The Element offers front and rear QD sling studs to enable the quick addition of a sling.
A light-gathering fiber optic front sight sits atop its serrated and ventilated rib and rubberized grip panels lend traction in wet conditions. To enable the Element to point naturally for the wide variety of shooters, a full set of shims give the ability to tune the stock’s cast and drop.
This gun weighs a diminutive 6.2 pounds, unloaded. Its overall length is 43.25 inches, and the length of pull is 14.625 inches. The drop at comb is 1.625 inches.
With a 22-inch barrel provides a robust sighting plane as well as yielding another advantage. A shorter barrel would be a little more handy in the woods, but the tradeoff in velocity loss would be significant if the barrel was clipped to, say, 18 inches. Velocity is your friend when trying to land a payload upside a gobbler’s noggin’ at 40 yards.
The magazine capacity is four rounds, and one in the pipe brings its total payload to five shots.
A nice touch is this gun’s finish. It’s a throwback to Mossy Oak’s Bottomland camo. To say that I’m a fan of Toxey Haas’ original camouflage design would be an understatement as well. Shortly after going to work for the National Wild Turkey Federation in 1990, then Director of Marketing Gary West and I became good friends and hunting buddies.
My first turkey gun was a Remington Sportsman 12, which is a budget version of the legendary Model 870. With numerous connections in the sporting goods industry, Gary pulled some strings and had my old pump gun shipped off to Color Works, the first company that specialized in hydro dipping firearms in a handful of camouflage patterns. I killed my first turkey with that gun. Its camo job still looks pretty good 32 years later, with the finish worn down to the blueing on the bottom edges of the receiver. Too many years of cradling a repeating shotgun in a hand with grit and “skeeter dope” will wear down the toughest of gun finishes.
Performance
There was a time when I spent a lot of effort on finding the optimal load and choke constriction on any new turkey gun, but it seems much easier these days. Once upon a time, I took 3-inch magnum 20 gauge No. 6 loads from Remington, Federal and Winchester and put them through progressively tighter chokes until I found the tightest-shooting load-and-choke combination at 35 yards. That was about the max range, give or take a yard, that enough shot landed on a tom’s head with enough density and energy to still break a neck bone or penetrate the skull.
These days I take an abbreviated approach to patterning turkey guns. I shoot at 20 yards with dove loads until I’m satisfied that the center of the pattern is hitting point of aim, for the first step. I swap to a 3-inch load of Federal TSS to check zero at 20 yards for the next step. That usually takes just one shot to confirm shot placement at close range. Once that’s accomplished, I move back from the target in 10-yard increments until I can no longer keep 100 pellets inside a 10-inch circle. Then, I’ll cut that last distance by five yards and shoot again. I found that this Weatherby 20 gauge was deadly out to 45 yards with No. 8 TSS. Now, it was on me to get within that range with the bad bird.
Game Time
Previous seasons’ encounters with the ancient tom told me that the gobbler with a distinctive gobble roosted in three primary areas separated by nearly a mile. The most distant roost was near the Duck River on another farm, while the closest was deep in the woodlot behind my house.
A year earlier I came as close to killing that tom as any other occasion. That morning he was in the closest roost area when he gobbled in the pre-dawn blackness. I slipped as close as I dare in the open woods and picked a tree. For the next 2 ½ hours after flydown I kept the tom gobbling with infrequent hen yelps and soft purring on a slate call. It was so frustrating to watch the tip of his fan float back and forth just over a rise at 80 yards. Late in the game, another younger tom sneaked in to see what all the fuss was about. I didn’t know he was there until he gobbled the first time 10 yards off my right shoulder. Stuck, I couldn’t do more than watch. I most likely could have killed the smaller bird as he walked closer to the old tom, but held off eyeing the prize. When they joined up, it was rather anticlimactic. They simply walked off in the opposite direction. To add insult to injury, the old bird gobbled one more time more than a quarter mile away.
The strut zone vacated, I stiffly got up and walked closer. In the middle of where the old tom strutted back and forth I hatched a plan. Backtracking 25 yards I found a huge beetle-killed ash tree. Its crown was snapped off several feet above the ground and lie in a broken clump. Nearly three feet at the stump, the broken snag presented an excellent back rest. I spent the next 45 minutes dragging broken branches back to the spot and built a cozy blind. I never got a chance to hunt that blind that season.
Back to the present. The morning after I had heard to old tom announce the day down by the Duck River, I thought there might be a chance that he silently stole into the woodlot nearest my house and roosted for the night. I had no evidence, just a hunch. I rose 30 minutes earlier, dressed and slipped out the back door with the Weatherby in tow.
Picking my way slowly in the dark, I weaved my way along a familiar deer trail toward the blind.
Once seated, I kept the diaphragm call between my cheek and gum instead of simulating the stereotypical roosted hen limb calls. I waited. When the first tom gobbled over a half mile away, I waited some more. A noise caught my attention. Turning my head slightly, I could just make out a gobbler drumming on the limb. He had to be close.
The cardinals and crows got busy at first light, with the latter sailing toward the distant tom and fussing at him enough to make him gobble every 30 seconds. When a hen sounded off in that direction, the old tom couldn’t stand it any more and split the air with a loud limb gobble 40 yards away. I caught sight of him teetering on a limb in full strut. He stayed on his perch for more another 25 minutes before I heard his wings.
I cheeked the stock on the Weatherby, its sights trained in the middle of the old strut zone. I heard the tom drumming again, this time just out of sight in a depression to the south of the strut zone. I waited some more. That familiar red and white head appeared, with just his eyes showing over the rise. Down periscope.
He was close enough to kill, but still out of sight. When the distant tom gobbled again, I watched the top of the old bird’s fan break the rise and loom larger with every step. Five more steps and he was in full view. The first call I made that morning was the last thing he ever heard. I cutt loudly, making him poke his head up and he flopped over backward when the load of TSS swarmed his face at 23 steps.
After he stopped flopping, I sat beside him for a while. A neighbor’s chainsaw in the distance punctured the moment, so I rose and slung his 25 ½-pound carcass over my shoulder. Weatherby Element cradled in my right camo-gloved hand, I felt the rhythmic slap of the tom’s soggy head as it slapped a bloody spot on the back of my thy. I smiled all the way back to the house.
SPECIFICATIONS
- Manufacturer: Weatherby
- Model: Element Turkey
- Gauge: 20
- Overall Length: 43.25
- Weight: 6.2 pounds
- Barrel Length: 22
- Mag Capacity: 4+1
- Length of Pull: 14.625
- Drop @ Comb: 1.625
- Drop @ Heel: 2.25
- Chamber: 3″
- Choke: IC,M,F,XF
- MSRP: $799.00