I took my boys (13 and 11) for opening day of turkey season last weekend and we were on a new lease this year. At first light, we heard a turkey gobble about 500 yards away and headed that direction. We got within a 100 yds and set up our decoy and started calling. My 13 year old won the coin flip to shoot first and was using a 20 gauge with what I thought was 1 oz #5 shot. These were reloads that I had inherited when my dad died and that was what was labeled on the box. For the first time in 3 years of trying, we got a gobbler to respond and we could hear him coming our way. At about 70 yds I finally caught a glimpse of him and had my son get his gun up. The gobbler stopped at 27 paces and my son shot and that gobbler jumped in the air and ran off before we could get a second shot. We searched for over 200 yds to our property line and never found any sign or the bird. My son was insistant that he was right on the neck of the bird and I figured he just pulled it high. We went back to camp and I got a soda can and paced off 27 yds and had him shoot the can. He sure enough hit the can but the holes were awful little. I cut open 3 other shells in the box and discovered that they were 7/8 oz of #8 birdshot. I hope the turkey was just stung a little and no damage was done but I could have kicked myself for not range testing these shells before we went out. Some lessons are hard learned but at least we had the excitement of actually calling a turkey in and watching it strut just like we have been watching on hunting videos.

That sounds like a great hunt. There is nothing like watching a Tom in full strut.

I sympathize with you on the ammo. Do you know how much a 260 Rem round looks like a 243 Win round? I'll say no more!

Good Luck on the rest of the season.

Oh, NO - TOM!

Say it isn't so! :eek:

pistol pete
I know what you are talking about.
My Bro-in-Law got tired of making his own ammo,and sold out to Me,at a good price.
His loaded ammo was packaged in boxes with different bullets in the same box.The label indicated only one load,so I knew that one box was mixed up.
I decided to pull the bullets on ammo in all 6 boxes.3 of them were mixed loadings,with different powders or bullets.Only 3 were shootable,at all.
No wonder he gave up.
Frank

My brother unloaded his 1917 enfield at the end of a deer march and looked at the bullet that was in the chamber and it was a 270. Also was reloading some 3006 last fall and wondered why it was hard to resize but didn't think anything of it then when looking over the loaded rounds found out that one was a 270 case now necked up to a 308 caliber.. didn't shoot it but it propli would of worked...