Getting 'Bess Ready for Turkey Season

[hinamanra]

I fired about a hundred shots of hundred different load combinations with 1FG, 2FG and 3FG powder and 1oz. up to 2oz. of 4, 5 and 6 shot and a lot of different wad/card combinations.
My turkey load: 110gr. 1FG, four o/s cards, ½" fiber wad soaked in balistal and split into four sections, 2oz. Nickle plated 5 shot (or 2oz. of any shot you like) topped with an o/s card. The gun is a 20 bore fusil de chasse, 42" barrel. Now I've only taken 11 gobblers with this load so far out to 35 yards, mostly at 10 to 20 yards. Some may call it a stout load for a 20 bore, but they can't argue with the results.
All I can tell you from my experience is to use what others have experienced working up a loads and go out and apply it to your bess until you find what it likes best. I'm still not done, I want to play with skychief's combo, I just haven't got to it yet. Have fun.

 

[OldSmoky1967]

O.K. that didn't explain why the hole in pattern, the rest is a little off track and left me scratching my head.

Too much powder blows a hole through the center. One over comes this my adding a slight bit more shot. This has been known since the late 1600’s. There is an old poem called “ The Art of Shooting Flying”. Check it out. It addresses the problem and solution. It’s a pretty cool read. Here is the link.
https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-art-and-poetry-of-shooting-flying.html?m=1

 

[Grenadier1758]

It seems that our search engines may have a hard time finding solutions published 300 years ago. @OldSmoky1967 is correct. We often have long threads on what is meant by some of the terms in the poem. So, we can keep the information current.