Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Pattern of success
Knowing how shotgun shoots betters chances
You’ve spent a lot of money on a shotgun, choke tube and shells, but if you don’t spend some time at the range you’ll probably miss your gobbler.
Scott Carlson, owner of Carlson Choke Tubes, said failing to pattern a shotgun is the biggest mistake turkey hunters make.
“Before deer season, you go out and sight in your rifle,” Carlson said. “You should do that with your shotgun, too, and you should do it just as carefully as you do with a rifle.”
That’s important, Carlson said, because shotguns are not made to shoot as precisely as rifles.
“They slap them together and they do test fire them before they leave the factory, but they don’t check to make sure they shoot straight,” Carlson said.
Different gun and choke combinations can shoot the same load with wide variations. From testing many thousands of rounds, Carlson said he’s developed an easy and dependable guide.
If you shoot a Remington 1100 or 11-87 12-gauge, Carlson said, a tube with a constriction of .660 gives the best patterns.
If you shoot a Browning Gold, Browning BPS, Winchester SX2 or SX3, you’ll get the best patterns with a tube constriction of .665.
“The Brownings and Winchester have back-bored barrels,” Carlson said. “They are one-thousandth of an inch more open.”
If you shoot a Mossberg 835 or 935, a .675 tube will give your best patterns.
“The important thing in any turkey choke design is constriction and parallel section [the portion of the tube that measures constriction], Carlson said. “The choke section tapers from the bore to where the choke starts, and from there it gets parallel. That determines the optimum pattern. We found that as long as it’s got 1.2 inches in parallel, it’s going to pattern as well as it will.”
Glenn Clark of H&G Reps joined me Monday for a patterning session with some new equipment. For years, I used a special Remington 11-87 turkey gun fitted with a Remington Predator tube. It performed very well with 3-inch shells loaded with 1 ½ ounces of No. 5 Hevi-Shot, but this year I’m using a Winchester Super X3 semiautomatic. Clark wanted to try some loads containing a 2-ounce blend of No. 5-6-7 Hevi-Shot in a Mossberg 930 Turkey Thug fitted with a Primos Jellyhead tube.
Jimmy Primos, vice president of Primos Hunting, said all the Primos guys use Remington shotguns but added that Primos tubes consistently print the best patterns with Mossberg 835 and 935 shotguns.
“They also kick the hardest,” Primos said.
Clark and I soon discovered that painful fact with his 930, which gave us both sharp jabs to the jaw.
With an untried gun you have to start somewhere, so I used a garden variety, factory Invector Plus full tube with my SX3. We put up a turkey target and put a rest on a shooting table 40 yards away. Holding on the junction of the back and neck, I fired one of Clark’s blended HeviShot loads and obliterated the target. We backed up 10 yards and fired the same load from 50 yards. The pattern was a bit looser, but it still would have cleanly killed a turkey.
Clark had similar results with his combination.
Then, I screwed a small-diameter turkey choke into the SX3. The results were puzzling. With that tube, my gun wouldn’t pattern any load.
Actually, it probably did, Carlson said. To find out how your gun really shoots, you have to use a really big target.
“Most people buy these 12-by-12 [turkey] targets, but most guns do not shoot point of aim,” Carlson said. “If they don’t see many pellets in this turkey head they’re shooting at, more than likely it’s because the center mass of the pattern is outside their target.”
Carlson recommended putting a bigger sheet of paper behind the target to catch the pattern.
One problem with buying a new turkey choke is that you can’t test it first. Same with a shotgun. If you don’t pattern the combination, it’s the same as putting a scope on a rifle and not sighting it in before you take it deer hunting.
“I’ve got a Benelli Super Black Eagle II that shoots 6 inches high,” Carlson said. “We’ve got a [Remington] Versa-Max that we use to test patterns here that shoots 3 inches low and 3 inches to the right.”
Once you figure out the impact point, Carlson said you don’t have to test many loads. Premium turkey loads are expensive, but Carlson said you can use pheasant loads for your basic patterning.
“I’d get two different loads and shoot two rounds out of each type,” Carlson said. “If you shoot a pheasant load out of a full choke, the point of aim will be the same out of that turkey choke.
“Generally, most turkey loads will pattern good,” he continued. “We find also that 3-inch shells outpattern 3½-inch shells, so save some money and save your shoulder.”
For the best long- range performance, Carlson recommended Hevi-Shot. For standard loads, he recommended copper-plated shot over straight lead.
“I don’t advocate shooting at turkeys at 60 yards,” he said, “but if you pattern your gun and know what it will do, you can consistently kill turkeys at 60 yards.”