We were building some stuff in my shop and got to talking about turkey loads he was using. So we built a target and took it out to 40 yards. He shot it with his 3.5" #4 turkey loads. He is a big boy and said he hates target shooting with them, although it never bothers him when shooting. We looked at his pattern and I told him I would not hunt with it - too many open holes and not well centered. He was kind of dejected and said "Maybe that is why I missed one last year". Ummm, yeah! So I looked through the shells I had that had not shot well out of my 870 and gave him some Hevi Shot Mag Blend Reduced recoil in 2 3/4" (I had actually grabbed them one time a few years back and thought they were 20s) and we set up a shoot'n'see target at 40 yards. Great pattern! he loved the low recoil. I also had a box and a half of 3" hevi 6 and he shot those too. He found his hunting load! Great, even full pattern. I gave him those boxes but don't think he will be going back to the cheaper loads in the gun. I told him he could buy other lead loads and other chokes and play around, but money is tight for him and he found a killer with his existing choke, but now he will have to pay more for shells at some point in the future.
