What's your best turkey load?

[Tom A Hawk]

12 Gauge dbl. choked full/full. 100 grains FF / equal volume copper plated 4's. Two felt wads. A plastic finger wad with the cup cut off. Thin cardboard overshot wad. These two jakes were part of a group of six and were kind enough to put their heads close together. One shot downed both.

 

[Sicilian Hunter]

12 Gauge dbl. choked full/full. 100 grains FF / equal volume copper plated 4's. Two felt wads. A plastic finger wad with the cup cut off. Thin cardboard overshot wad. These two jakes were part of a group of six and were kind enough to put their heads close together. One shot downed both.

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Tom,
Bully shot!!

 

[Rifleman1776]

Timely post. Just this a.m. there were four toms in my yard. Big ones. All had about 10" beards. Not in season but very tempting. Enneyhow, congrats, nice birds. Your load sounds massive to me. Did those turks complain about it? ;-)

 

[Sidney Smith]

The load I use for turkeys is 80 grains 2fg and 90 grains of shot. IIRC 90 grains of shot is equal to about 1 1/4 oz. I use telephone book paper for wadding. Crumple up a couple small pieces over the powder, tamp flat, pour lead, then a piece over the shot. It patterns well enough out to 25 yards in my 20 gauge cylinder bored flintlock. The pattern isn't super dense, but dense enough to consistently put 4 or 5 pellets in a turkey target's head, and that's all it takes to kill one.