I have been working on some 1.25oz loads of #6 magnum shot for an old gun and have been using an 870 with an extended .670 choke as a comparison.
This should be close to a comparable load to what Henry Davis used in His first WW Greener, a 2.75" gun.
His gun was shooting 84% patterns in the 30" circle at 40 yards, I wanted to see how my 2 guns patterned compared to what Mr. Davis would of been hunting with back then.
In the 870 an 86% pattern is the best the gun has done so far with this load of 1.25ounces of magnum #6 shot. 86% is 237 pellets in the 30" (out of 277 pellets). the best 10" inside the 30" circle had 69 pellets in it. This was also using buffer which the Super X load Mr. Davis used did not have.
I have a clear plastic overlay of the realistic kill areas of a gobbler skull and neck bone. Putting that over top the 10" there were 2 areas where there were only 3 pellets that would of been actual kill shots, everywhere else in the 10" had at least 6 lethal pellets.
The old 12 gauge gun is choked xtra full, not as tight as the 870, 78% patterns have been the best so far. This is 215 in the 30", with the best 10" inside the 30" having 60 pellets. The skull/ neckbone had 1 area with only 2 lethal pellets and 3 areas with 3 lethal pellets, the rest of the 10" had 5-6 lethal kill pellets in the skull/neck bone.
Later Mr. Davis went to a 3" Greener and shot the 1.5oz SuperX load and eventually the 1 5/8oz load.
The 1.5oz load of #6's would of been roughly 20 more pellets in the 10" than the 1.25 oz load had.
Easy to see why people increased pellet count in turkey loads.