Thread: Homemade KABOOM !

That rig bites on both ends. I have a little experience in the shotgun arena and if you want to Mad Max that bad boy load a 3in Heavy Shot load in it while backing off your constriction at the choke to about .030in. Any tighter and misses are regular at 35 yards. If a man can call a 20ga loaded with Heavy Shot with a Imp Mod choke is deadly. I was taking a Choke order for one of the larger North Louisiana stores and the Owners we would comp them chokes, barrel work, or both. This guy is a avid Turkey hunter, quite good, He made a statement to me, My Choke doesn't seem to kill them as dead as it used to? My response was "How dead is really dead?" I'm thinking it was a gag or something. Well I found out thru conversation He was getting a red spray at 20 yards or so, if your aim is a little off shooting Heavy Shot that tight you can miss. Round BB's create a vacuum on the backside by Venturi Effect slowing them down the longer they are in flight, Heavy Shot being irregular shaped is not affected and so carries it's stored kinetic energy a much greater distance. Word of caution, Heavy Shot shells Kick!

Originally Posted by MCG1

The turkeys and the stories are always bigger in Texas, eh?

used to hear about them big ole toms that weighed over 30 lbs and such , shot many a double beard and triple beard in my time and aint sure I ever seen a 30 lb bird , me thinks some of them storied giant tom birds ,aint just from Texas ,....
thinks the last one that was what we call huge that I weighed was under 20 a hair ? not sure but pretty darn sure we aint got no 30 lbers ....

I patterned my gun a bit when I set it up and never change ammo , it does shoot a bit off dead center , not sure about the way out there though as it was patterned at 25 yards , do know it sure enough hurts ones shoulder to whack a bird with it though

Ancient history, 1994, shot a tom 20#4oz, 10 1/2" beard, weighed on certified scales. Ag property with a swamp and great roosting property bordering it. A few years later saw a bird there that dwarfed it. Public land birds rarely hit 20# in my area now.

On Opening Day of the 2007 N.C. turkey season I killed a 24.5 pound gobbler with 11.75 inch beard and 1.5 inch spurs and it won the big gobbler contest at the local sports shop. I used to shoot Winchester Supreme 1.75 oz. of copper plated #6s and they patterned well enough. The following year I shot a longbeard at 36 yards with the same load. It rolled him, cut feathers, & drew blood, but he got up and ran off. I looked for days and never found him, nor any feathers, or a carcass. I switched to Hevi Shot #6s and #7s. That stuff holds a pattern well and really thumps 'em. I've never shot at a turkey over 37 yards, but based on what my pattern does with Hevi shot at 40 yards, I know it will do the job at 50...if that day ever comes. Those turkey loads are bad news on birds. I can't even dream of shooting 3.5" shells, it's just too punishing. My Benelli patterns 3" Hevi shells better anyway.

I used to have a 10 ga. side by side Zabala made in Spain that was a beast. It would kill from the front and cripple behind. I was hunting ducks and geese with it in Colorado with some buddies when a V of geese came over lower than the rest we'd seen. I swung out past the lead bird and pulled both triggers at the same time. It liked to have screwed me into the ground. I was shooting BB shot and the 2nd & 3rd bird in the V folded stone dead before they hit the ground. I'm not a big man (5'9", 170 Lbs.) & I ended up selling that gun to my roommates brother, who is a big guy...The recoil was just too much for me to handle.

Jim