Your artillery

[FullChoke]

Team20,

We are a group of rabid turkey hunters, much like many other rabid turkey hunters, who's hearts pound in our chests in anticipation of the chance to put our woods knowledge up against a target who is equipped with some of the most advanced senses and survival skills that there are instilled in any one animal. What sets us apart from the rest of the turkey hunting fraternity is that we boldly and confidently walk away from our trucks in the mornings carrying a smaller and more carefully considered firearm that was generally relegated to women and children not too long ago. With major advances in choke tubes/commercial and handloaded shotgun shells/stocks in recent years we are now able to fully compete with the bigger guns and have found that it doesn't take a Chinese ocean liner full of shot to flat line a turkey.

We have the option of customizing and tweaking many aspects of our guns to make them better fit our intended uses. There's a lot of fun in doing that. So let's go ahead and post some pictures to show off your shooting irons that you will be looking over the top of this season with a description of your components and why you went with this combination.

Just like you, your shotguns can't wait to Roar!

Cheers 

FullChoke

[Sand Man]

Reloading TSS for my 12ga is what lead me to the 20ga.  I can't tell you how many 20's I've built for family and friends once they've seen mine in action.  I'm just glad Apex, Nitro, and Federal stepped up to the TSS game.  I about wore out a reloader trying to keep all these knuckleheads in ammo.  Although truthfully, the Federal HW #7's will more than do the job at the distance we call birds to before we pull the trigger.

All of my builds start life as a Youth Remington 870 20ga.  I want the youth model for the shorter 21" barrel.  I have all the receivers drilled and tapped for a rail.  Myself and most of the other run a Burris Fast Fire on top of our guns.  I was using the Knoxx Adjustable stock until Knoxx discontinued the 20ga model.  It was a dream to have a gun under 7 pounds the stock could be adjust for an adult or kid to use.  I've now started using Remington SureShot stocks on my builds unless the gun is for a kid or the guys need it to adjust for a woman or kid.  I've hand painted more than I care to count.  It's tedious, but fun work.  I enjoy it as no one will have the exact same camo as what I do once I'm finished.  My favorite by far was my personal gun and the 1st I ever attempted to hand paint.  I spent way too many hours on this gun, but I learned less is more and some short cuts to help on the other paint jobs.  Here she is in all her glory:





















Killed my 1st Slam with this gun.  I've since moved to a Remington 870 28ga.  I killed my 1st bird with it last year.  I hope I can get a Slam with it and move to the .410

Only picture I have of my 28ga:


The Remington subgauges for the most part are all built of the 20ga frame.  So, the stocks work on all the guns. Rather than changing the 28ga permanently I went with a Saddle mount for the Fast Fire in case I ever want to wing shoot with it.  I really thought about sending the barrel off to be cut and threaded with chokes, but since I won't always hunt with this gun the fixed mod barrel does good enough @ 30-35 yards.  Just makes it a little more of a challenge.

I run TSS #9.5 handloads in all my guns.  1 5/8oz in the 20ga and 1 7/16oz in the 28ga.

[FullChoke]

Several years ago I won a Remington 870 20 gauge shotgun at an NWTF banquet. I was perfectly happy with my 12 gauge Browning BPS, although the weight of it was a real hindrance. I wasn't really looking to change guns, but I had been reading reports on this board from 20 gauge shooters who were posting some amazing patterns and piles of dead gobblers next to small piles of spent yellow shells. I decided to go ahead and begin the fun process of Pimping my Ride. I started by drilling the magazine cap and installing hardware for a sling. I also installed a fiber optic open sight on it, put a Primos Jellyhead choke tube and started shooting the new fangled Federal Heavyweight 7's with the Flight Control wad. Opening morning the next year I flipped a longbeard backwards into a ditch at 38 yards with that combo, and as they say, the rest is history.

The next year I deep cleaned the barrel, polished it, drilled and tapped the receiver myself, installed a 336 picatinny rail and mounted a Mueller QuickShot red dot sight on it. I fabbed up a cheek riser out of several pieces of a neoprene wetsuit and attached it to the stock to help me get up high enough to align my view with the sight. I had that for a year. I also made a paracord sling that just disappears in the woods.





The next off-season was when the real transformation came. I had hand painted a shotgun in the past and I thought that it turned out real nicely, but I had some other ideas about camouflaging this bad boy. I did a lot of research into military theories of camo and it came down to two schools: Make it so that it doesn't stand out in the environment or make the camo look exactly like something already found in nature. Most camouflage companies follow the first approach. They make camo with random images with no 'correct' orientation. This allows them to sew randomly cut pieces together for clothing that is still effective. The other school of making the camo duplicate something natural and would not arouse undue attention was the avenue that I wanted to develop for the gun. The shape of a shotgun is already very similar to that of a broken off tree limb, so I started with that. I won't go into specific details about the process, but I applied a custom 3D camouflage to the gun and painted it to match the coloration of a limb about 2 feet off of the ground. It has an additional camo treatment known as counter-shading, where an object has lighter shading applied on the bottom and darker shading on the top. When sunlight and resultant shadows are cast on the object, they neutralize each other out and it tends to tonally flatten out the object and draws even less attention to the gun.


Raising the comb.


The invisible Man


Madonna and child


Details


Almost the last thing that a gobbler sees.


I am convinced through first hand experiences as to the effectiveness of my little project. I have had a number of close encounters with hens and gobblers that seemed to pay absolutely no attention to the camouflaged gun, even when I am moving it to get on target. I can only guess that they see it simply as a moving limb, which they have seen every day of their lives, just without the associated flash of light immediately followed by the heavenly chorus of gobbler angels on high.



Cheers 

FC

[jakesdad]

No pics but I run a plain Jane wood stock Remington 870 with a primos jellyhead choke. Have used the original Remington hevi shot #6 loads for years but am switching to longbeards this year. Its pretty boring, but it works!

[mightyjoeyoung]

She'll be getting a camo facelift soon but this is my go to turkey slayer.  Her name is Lucy Lawless and I've put a lot of work into her.  Mirror polished and pinned barrel, patriot sear spring and polished sear, machined extractor,  titanium firing pin and stainless pin spring, drilled and tapped, and topped with a short rail.  All she needs now is a new skin and she'll be done...I hope. Lol.

[CtRider]

I'm a 870 Supermag, no mods yet beside a shoulder strap and a hevishot choke. Might add optics this year.

[3seasons]

Sandman's shotgun is legit and looks even better in person.

Full choke I want to learn more about that 3D type painting that's just slick.

Sandman got me back to shooting a 20ga and I also shoot a youth model 870 21" barrel with an ATI stock with the surefire forearm with a Burris FF3 on top. I love this setup and I've built my wife and my daughter one also along with a few other friends.

[xarcher]

Just a plain old Remy 1187.  Also doubles as a kick stand for my moutain hunting rig

[harleytom]

Stoeger 3020 with Speedbead and FF3