As seen in the March 2023 issue of Ballistic Magazine.
Mid-April last year I was sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with long-time friend Eddie Stevenson before sunrise listening to a longbeard hammer the day awake. Before long, the tom was gobbling so close to us we could smell his breath. Problem was, the tom was directly behind us. He skirted behind us and walked off in the direction of a real hen while never presenting a shot.
As the first morning’s hunt wound down, a band of feral hogs moseyed into a corn feeder about 120 yards distant. Always willing to help thin wild hog populations, I snuck downwind to about 30 yards of the troupe. The finally spotted me in the open mesquite and began trotting off.
The last of 13 pigs turned and faced me at 33 paces, so I put the red dot of the Trijicon MRO on the pig’s skull and let the new Sauer SL5 turkey gun eat. The payload from a Federal 12 gauge TSS found its mark right between the sow’s eyes and she dropped like a rock. Amazing the power and penetration of a modern turkey load.
If this gun/optic/load combination was so devastating to a hog’s thick skull at that distance, I was sure that it could handle a turkey’s more-fragile noggin a bit further.
SL5 Turkey Details
J.P. Sauer and Sohn, Germany’s oldest manufacturer of hunting firearms, introduced their new high-performance SL5 Turkey shotguns last spring. Featuring a durable Inertia-Driven System requiring fewer parts and minimal cleaning, the smooth-cycling, accurate, and reliable SL5 12 gauge is available in three camo patterns – Mossy Oak Obsession, Mossy Oak Bottomland, and Mossy Oak New Bottomland.
Designed for hardcore turkey hunters, these semi-auto 12-gauge shotguns accommodate 2 ¾ and 3-inch shells and feature an 18.5-inch deep-drilled, chrome-lined barrel with stepped rib for precise alignment.
All SL5 Turkey models feature a black anodized receiver with oversized extended bolt handle and release button, removable Picatinny rail, and durable camo composite pistol-grip stock with Cervellati recoil pad and sling attachments. A red single-bead LPA front fiber-optic sight facilitates fast and accurate target acquisition.
“We are excited to partner with Mossy Oak to introduce these new high-performance, camo pattern turkey guns in our SL5 series,” Jason Evans, CEO, Blaser Group said. “There is strong demand, and we designed these new shotguns to deliver desired features and consistent reliability at a very competitive price point.”
Made in Italy by Breda these shotguns are backed by a 10-year factory warranty. The SL5 Turkey shotguns weigh 7 pounds, have a 3+1 capacity, and come standard with three chokes – a flush Cylinder, an extended CRIO Plus Modified choke, and a Carlson extended turkey choke. The Carlson choke measures .675, which is a happy medium for a turkey choke that may fire copper-plated magnum loads or more-dense tungsten loads.
The SL5 Turkey checks a lot of important boxes for a great, dedicated gobbler knocker. The two most prevalent features — a pistol-grip stock and optic rail – set this gun apart from the crowd.
A Blast from the Past
Back in 1998 when I was the National Wild Turkey Federation’s Editor of Turkey Call Magazine, I searched for a thumb-hole stock for my Remington 870 to get a more comfortable grip on the situation. I had several conversations with a fiberglass stock maker about this issue, but the final outcome was that it was too expensive for the company to tool up a new mold for a stock that had questionable sales potential.
Still determined, in October 1998 I was hunting with old friend Tad Brown on Missouri’s Truman Lake for a fall turkey. That was also the last week that long-time gun stock maker Fajan was in business in Warsaw, Missouri. We stopped by the factory the last afternoon their doors were open and I bought a Remington 870 thumbhole trap stock for $40. It was a good transition toward a pistol-grip.
A couple of months later I had a conversation with Mossberg’s former P.R. man, Matt Wettish, in early 1999. He fitted a camouflaged Speed Feed pistol-grip stock to his Model 835 Ulti-Mag 12 ga. and was happy with the setup. I was pleasantly surprised a few days later when a prototype Mossy Oak camouflaged pistol-grip stock fitting my Mossberg Model 9200 I had showed up at my door.
I replaced the original stock on the 9200 with the radical looking handle. I took the outfit on a late-spring hunt in New York and was pleased with the fit. In hunting situations, the pistol grip stock did its intended job of keeping the trigger hand and wrist in line with the rest of the arm, thus creating a more relaxed grip.
At the time, I hunted with the setup frequently. It worked! Not only did it provide a more comfortable grip, it allowed one-hand shooting with more flexibility to swing further to my right to get on a bird if necessary. Over the next couple of months word got out about my pistol-grip turkey gun, but the top brass at Mossberg and NWTF colluded to deep-six the concept and it went nowhere.
In mid-2001, I left the NWTF and went to work for Stoeger Publishing, which was a part of the Beretta Holdings conglomerate. It was housed at the BerettaUSA factory in Accokeek, Maryland, and was put under the management of BenelliUSA. During my initial job interview the conversation turned to my opinions about the future of turkey guns.
A few weeks later when I arrived at my new job, my boss had four prototype Benelli M1s fitted with pistol-grip stocks and ghost ring sights. I soon thereafter got a chance to buy a Benelli M1 at a rock bottom price that wore a prototype camo, Realtree’s 20/200. I added a black pistol-grip stock and an 18 ½-inch tactical barrel that accepted choke tubes.
A few months later, BenelliUSA was the first firearms manufacturer to offer pistol-grip turkey guns; the M1 and Super Black Eagle fitted with a “Steady Grip” stock. The first guns sold out quickly and supply couldn’t keep up with demand for several months. The following year Mossberg, Remington, Franchi, and several other companies offered their own pistol-grip or thumbhole turkey gun models.
It is interesting to note that while I worked at Stoeger, today’s Blaser Group CEO, Jason Evans, was the product manager for BenelliUSA subsidiary Franchi. His office was directly across the hall from my own.
The other prevalent feature of the SL5 Turkey is an optics rail. Stick around and I’ll tell you why.
The Eyes Have It
Three decades ago, I was eyeball-deep in the world of the wild turkey. I had a front row seat to many of the technological advancements in the turkey gun and ammo world. One of those many jumps in technology was the addition of optics for shooting gobblers with shotguns.
I learned early on from my optometrist brother-in-law, David Montgomery, that most American males over 40 need some form of vision correction. Translated to shooting a shotgun with bead sights, this needed vision correction coupled with the average age of most turkey hunters being above 50, mean that most need some help. Focusing on a shotgun bead and a gobbler’s noggin several yards away becomes rather difficult.
Another way to look at the situation (pardon the pun) is that when our eyes change to near-sighted or far-sighted, we need a pair of lenses to add some correction. In my own case, my distance vision went from 20/10 at age 26 to 20/40 in a couple years’ time. Add about 15 years and I needed bifocals to see clearly. Even with vision correction, when I looked down a shotgun barrel and focused on a gobbler’s head the shotgun sights became a blur. To fix the problem I mounted low-power scopes to a couple turkey guns and the problem was solved. Fast forward from then to now and we’ve seen even more low-power optics appear, including red dot sights, to help aging eyes get on target.
Optic Spotlight
To outfit the Sauer turkey gun for my upcoming Texas hunt I mounted a Trijicon MRO HD 1×24 red dot sight. The “MRO” stands for Miniature Rifle Optic, but it works on shotguns, too.
My normal sight-in process with a turkey gun is to use dove loads fired at a large sheet of paper at 15 yards. The pattern is tight enough at that short distance to make sight adjustment easier. Once the point of aim and point of impact line up I moved back to 40 yards and again shoot a dove load to fine tune my zero. Lastly, I switch to a magnum hunting load to verify zero or make any final adjustments. With popular turkey loads selling for $10 a shot, this procedure makes the most sense. You don’t get pounded with as much magnum recoil, either.
Trijicon MRO Specs
The Trijicon MRO is a sealed, miniature reflex sight with a large aperture and tapered light path to maximize the viewing area. The MRO allows for better situational awareness and faster target engagement, especially from non-standard shooting positions you might encounter while turkey hunting.
Combine these features with ambidextrous brightness controls, sub-flush adjusters, advanced lens coatings and the fully sealed, waterproof, hard-anodized forged 7075-T6 housing and you have a military-tough mini reflex sight.
The MRO HD offers battery longevity, too. Forget and leave the dot reticle on and the battery will last 2 ½ years. If you leave the complex reticle (dot in circle) and it’ll last 75 days with a continuous use setting cranked up to 5 of 8. The top-mounted brightness adjust knob is ambidextrous, too. The brightness dial is equally usable by left- or right-handed operators without having to remove your trigger hand.
If you’re looking for a top-notch red dot for your turkey gun, the Trijicon MRO is tough to beat. A parting word of advice: The MRO I used came with a full co-witness mount, which put it higher than I like for a turkey gun optic. You might want to go with a low mount for a more comfortable fit.
Turkey Time
Three days into the West Texas hunt had a small flock of birds located in a mesquite-lined creek bottom at the base of a huge cliff. Studying their patters from multiple previous hunts, we laid siege that afternoon. After an hour of calling, first one then another tom answered from about 150 yards distant. Over the next 90 minutes the feathered duo closed the gap to about 100 yards. We kept silent and the toms got frantic and started double- and triple-gobbling on their own. I answered with some loud hen yelps and staccato cutting, which broke the stalemate. They were coming.
In short order a fan popped into view about 60 yards out, so I sent a few more yelps their way. The pair kept walking and looking, gobbling every few steps. When they were at 30 yards, the biggest tom turned to our left and the smaller bird followed. I swapped the red dot to the smaller trailing tom to give Eddie a chance to kill the lead bird.
The plan almost worked, but when the trailing bird was almost out of sight, I lit the fire. The bigger tom wasn’t in the clear from Eddie’s angle when I shot, so it spoiled his chance. In this case, a bird in the hand truly was better than….
- Manufacturer: J.P. Sauer & Sohn
- Importer: Blaser USA
- Model: SL5 Turkey
- Gauge: 12, 2 ¾” and 3” magnum
- Barrel: Chrome-lined, 18.5”
- Finish: Mossy Oak Bottomland
- Weight: 7 pounds
- Capacity: 3+1
- MSPR: $1,199.99
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