Patterning shotgun is essential to performance

April is coming, and many turkey hunters are salivating over new choke tubes and the hottest new turkey loads.

Turkey hunters aren’t unique to the syndrome. It affects waterfowl hunters and target shooters equally, even if they are getting superb results from their present combination.

Distilled to its root motivation, the question actually is, “What choke and load will allow me to shoot a turkey, duck or goose farther than what I already have?”

We ask this question because technology substitutes for hunting. It is easier to call a turkey to 70 yards than it is to 30, so naturally we want our shotgun to kill a turkey at 70 yards. Forget the thrill of feeling the throbs of a gobbler’s drumming making your hair stand on end or the sound of his wingtips scraping the ground. Turkeys are scarce in Arkansas and the season is short. If a gobbler hangs up at 70 yards, your shotgun had better be able to take him down at 70 yards.

It’s also hard work to land a flock of ducks in a hole. Why bother if your shotgun can hit ducks at or above the treetops.

It’s the same for hunting big game. Modern crossbows and compound bows are fast enough and accurate enough to shoot game at distances that were once the domain of muzzleloading rifles. Modern muzzleloaders are accurate enough to take game at ranges that once required medium-powered rifles, and high-powered rifles equipped with appropriate optics can take game at ranges where game was previously invulnerable.

Hunting closes the distance of the shot. The shot closes the hunt. The shot should be as short as a hunter’s skills allow.

All of this brings us back to the turkey-choke-load dilemma. Shotgunners constantly ponder the best choke constriction for any situation. The simple answer is that there is no such thing as a best choke constriction for any situation. The only way to know is to test how your shotgun patterns with various choke and load combinations.

For this, we must first dispense with the doctrines that govern the art of shotgunning. For example, we often read that a full choke should place 70% of a load in a 30-inch circle at 40 yards. A modified choke should place 60%. The percentages increase as the constriction narrows, and it decreases as the constriction widens. The percentages also vary depending on the source, so there is no clear standard.

The generalizations omit important data. For a full choke, are we talking 70% of 11/4 ounce of No. 6 lead or 11/8 ounce of No. 4 lead? It takes a lot more No. 6 lead pellets than No. 4 to compose 11/4 ounce. We cannot expect uniform pattern densities from different loads through the same choke constriction. A different shotgun will pattern differently with the same choke and load, too.

Cartridge length factors into pattern density, as well. Is it a 23/4-inch or 3-inch load? Or is it a monster 31/2-inch 12-gauge load?

For wingshooting and for shooting clay targets, consistent densities are the goal. Your pattern should be even, with no gaps, at given ranges so that a lethal number of pellets will hit the target. A pattern should have no “holes” through which a dove or clay target can fly without multiple strikes.

The proof is in the results. Do you chip targets, break targets or obliterate targets? A different choke and/or a different load can convert chips to dusters. For duck hunters, changing one or more elements can turn persistent crippling into clean kills.

For turkey hunting, you want a dense pattern with few pellets at the margins. Brand and price of your choke tube and shells are irrelevant if they don’t perform satisfactorily. While testing turkey loads last summer, I got poor results from some expensive boutique chokes and high-dollar Tungsten Super Shot (TSS), but I also got stellar results from other expensive boutique chokes and TSS. I have also enjoyed stellar results with Hevi-Shot squeezed through ordinary Invector Plus and RemChokes.

The only way to know is to test them. The results will be evident afield.

Both of my turkey shotguns are tuned for optimum performance out to 40 yards, but something will had to have gone badly wrong for me to shoot at a turkey at 40 yards. My sweet spot is 20-25 yards. However, I have missed turkeys between 8 feet and 10 yards and then killed them with followup shots running away (and once flying away) at 20-30 yards.

Hunting brought them close enough to miss them. The killing shots ended the hunts, just as I had practiced them.