So I justified the purchase of a 20 gauge as a gun the kids could turkey hunt with but since they still have a year or two before they can hunt of course I had to test it out this year. I went with a mossberg super bantam, carlson .575 choke and topped it with a bushnell trs-25. I tried some hevishot magnum blend which did not pattern great and hevi 13 #7 which was much better but not overly impressive. I'm sure some of this was due adjusting the sight trying to fine tune the red dot. I assumed I would be hunting with the hevi 13 #7 but wanted to shoot the gun some more before the season and didn't want to shoot up the hevi 13's. I was hoping to buy some long beard # 6 but all that was on the shelve were 5 shot. I was hesitate that the low pellet count of #5 (212 by my calculations) would not pattern all that great especially past 30 yards. Was I wrong! At 30 yards, there were well over 100 pellets in a 10 in circle. I moved back to 40 yards not expecting much but was surprised to count 96 in a 10 inch circles and 15 in the turkey target vitals! After seeing this pattern I figured why not just hunt with this load. This past Saturday I got to test it on a gobble at 35 yards and it was a bang flop! Needless to say I could not be happier with this gun, choke, shell combination. Obviously there are shells out there that will give you greater numbers in a 10 inch circle but hunting purposes out to 40+ yards, this load is hard to beat!
