Better have someone at home waiting with the gravy, stuffing and mashed potatoes. With patterns like that you'll be having a nice turkey dinner real soon. Congratulations on your new gun and good luck calling in that sneaky ole Tom.

Regards,
Joe

 

Yea it'll definitely do the job, I've had 535's, 835's and 870's before and this one shoots as good as them. But this one was a whole lot cheaper. I've heard a lot about them longbeard xr's and gonna give them a try. Should really put some shot into the paper with #6s. And good luck yourself Joe, hoping to pack one out come Saturday morning.

 

I was looking for a new 20ga semiauto for my kid, and I thought about buying a Hatfield. I read so many bad reviews about it, that I discarted the idea about buying one. I bought a Silver Eagle SE17. Beautiful shotgun, and it only cost like $325 or something like that. Don't remember how much exactly, but I found it cheap for a brand new shotgun.

I really hope your Hatfield works flawlessly!

 

I've heard mixed reviews about the semi-auto, I would rather have a pump myself, a lot less moving parts to go wrong. And for $160 it seems to be hard to beat the pump. I don't believe I would buy the semi-auto unless I ran across it for $160, then I would give it a try. But believe the stock busting issue on the SAS was people tightening the tube nut down too tight. It probably is a ok gun for the money if your into to SAS guns but they're not for me.

 

Henry -- Glad you're shooting a few patterns with your choke/load combo before going after the birds.

Here are a few of my pattern numbers comparing 3 Winchester turkey loads. I doubt you will find a lead turkey load that will pattern as tight as the Long Beard load, and I'd stick with the No. 5 lead loads.

Pattering results are from a 12-gauge 3-inch Remington 870 Special Purpose with a 26" barrel and a Remington Turkey Super Full Extended Choke (.063" constriction from bore gauge).

Pattern testing was done on 48" x 48" pattern sheets with a turkey head-and-neck target centered on each sheet. This turkey head-and-neck target provided an aim point and allowed for Skull/Cervical Vertebra (S/CV) hit data for each pattern shot. The distance from muzzle to pattern was measured with a tape and then one pattern shot was fired at each of five pattern sheets with each load.

Following the pattern shots, a 30"/10" diameter pattern circle was centered over the densest portion of each pattern and the pellet strikes were counted. The five-shot averages for pattern counts, pattern percentages and S/CV hits are shown in the figures below. Additionally, the in-shell pellet counts are the average of five shells that were opened and counted.

12 GA 3" WINCHESTER LONG BEARD LEAD TURKEY LOAD
1 3/4 oz #5 lead (305 pellets, resin encased, copper coated) 1200 fps
Remington Turkey Super Full Extended Choke (.063" constriction)
Distance / 30" / 10" / S/CV Hits
40 YARDS / 295 (97%) / 118 / 11.8
50 YARDS / 275 (90%) / 89 / 7.4

12 GA 3" WINCHESTER SUPREME HIGH-VELOCITY LEAD TURKEY LOAD
1 3/4 oz #5 lead (293 pellets, buffered, copper coated) 1300 fps
Remington Turkey Super Full Extended Choke (.063" constriction)
Distance / 30" / 10" / S/CV Hits
40 YARDS / 257 (88%) / - / 5.8
50 YARDS / 170 (58%) / 27 / 2.0

12 GA 3" WINCHESTER SUPER-X LEAD TURKEY LOAD
1 7/8 oz #5 lead (317 pellets, buffered, copper coated) 1210 fps
Remington Turkey Super Full Extended Choke (.063" constriction)
Distance / 30" / 10" / S/CV Hits
40 YARDS / 276 (87%) / - / 3.4
50 YARDS / 162 (51%) / 28 / 1.8

Now you can be the judge, good luck!

 

The other loads didn't even come close compared to the long beards at 50 yards. Thats impressive at that distance. The long beards is the one's I'm shooting next, but somebody told me the long beards like a little opener choke than the .655 I got. Im still giving them a shot because all guns is different.

 

"somebody told me the long beards like a little opener choke than the .655" -- If that's the case, then have them post up their pattern results for all to see.

Yes, just shoot the .655 choke you have and let the patterns speak for themselves!

Good luck!

 

Henry -- Here is a link to an article on turkey loads that might be helpful. It's a little out of date now since some of the tungsten-based loads are no long in production and now there are several newer tungsten-based loads that aren't included, but I think it still has some helpful turkey load info.

http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/hunti ... _loads.htm

Hope this helps, good luck!

 

Thanks for the link Joe I'll give it a read over later this evening. I'm going to pick up some of those Long beards tm in #5 and #6. The guy that told me that was on another forum. He said I'd be better off sticking to the cheaper lead shot than the denser than lead shots. I guess we'll find out tm evening, I've heard nothing but good reviews about those Longbeard XR's.

 

Let us know how the patterning goes.

 

Everybody was sold out of the Long beards but my cousin did break the gun in earlier today. It's his first bird, not a giant but is a double beard. The Nitro Turkey did a great job, dropped on the spot at 41 yards.