Hello everyone, my first post! Glad I found this place.
I had always wanted a TK2000 muzzle loading shotgun and for some reason I bought one right before deer season. So instead of sighting in my rifle and black powder rifle I've been playing with my turkey gun.
I shot a lot last weekend using different mixes of ITX shot 4 and 6. Just about every shot was a dead turkey, but me being me I wanted to play until I found the best pattern. Anyway, I cut open some lead #5s and Hevi 13 #6s (the old ones with the white hulls) and went and bought some "shoot and see" targets.
I finally found my combo I will be hunting with. The one very dense pattern of the picture I attached is Hevi 13 #6 in a TPS 3 inch wad with a white overshot card and 90 grains of triple 7. I turned the target over and drew a 10 inch circle and had 173 hits in a 10 inch circle at roughly 40 yards according to the laser range finder.
The other target is 3.5 knight wad with knight overshot card 100 grains of triple 7 and mix of ITX shot 4 and 6. Right at 75% 6 shot and 25% 4 shot. It produced right at 95 hits in a 10 inch circle.
The end result of all my shooting is that every single shot would be a dead turkey at 40 yards whether it be lead straight 5 shot, ITX straight 6 shot or ITX straight 4 shot or a combo of 4x6 ITX and it didn't matter if it was a 3 inch wad or 3.5 inch wad or 90 or 100 grains of powder, all were dead turkeys but I really like that Hevi 13 pattern as it was at least 75%-100% better than the rest of my shots.
I ended up ordering a seven pound bag of Hevi Shot #6 and after reading on this forum for the last two night maybe I should have bought some of the #7 shotshells and cut them open before jumping the gun on $200 bucks worth of loose hevi #6.
Hevi 13 #6 40 Yards
ITX 4x6 40 Yards