Ep. 6: Shotgunning Turkeys
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As you all know, the sole purpose of this podcast is to help you find your target animal, get them close, and ultimately kill the animal as quickly and ethically as possible. Today we will be discussing the killing end of this equation with Daniel Compton of Federal Ammunition.

Our focus in today's conversation will be on shotgun shells while chasing turkeys. With so many options out there, I hope to dive into some of the things I want to know more about, such as shot size, shot material, shell length, choke options, and everything in between and how they all interact with each other. So let's jump right in. Welcome to the show, Daniel. Hey, thanks for having me. It's good to be on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. How's everything going there at Federal Ammunition? It's good. It's good. We're...

We're cranking it out as fast as we can. Very common question these days is like, where's all the ammo? And I know it's been a little tough for people, but usually like to address it right away when I get on with people. But I can assure you that we're making as fast as we can and getting as much out there for people so that they can get out in the field. Especially, you know, talking turkeys today. We've actually had, we've shipped a lot of turkey rounds this year, so it should be easier to find than it has been in the last couple.

Yeah, I noticed just browsing around a little bit, it seems to be, you know, there's a lot more in stock than out of stock compared to years past. Yeah, we made it very, we started really early. Like a lot of people assume that when we're loading shells that, you know, we'll start and we'll load turkey shells for one month, you know, like in January. But really to get ahead of it, we actually started about mid-October this year. And sometimes we'll even do some smaller runs in the summer just to try to get ahead of it. But yeah, we're doing our best.

Good deal. Good deal. Good to hear that. So like all of our episodes, we're going to start with a question and answers from our social email past episodes. If you want to submit your own questions to the podcast, email us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com. So I picked a couple easy questions here kind of with the theme of the podcast today. What gun, choke, and ammo combination are you using this year for Turkey? So I'll...

I'll say in years past, I've used a Mossberg 835 with a comp and choke 690. And I've used, um, federal three and a half inch copper plated number fives. It's just always thrown great patterns. Um, you know, I've got really good success with that. My pattern is pretty consistent. Um,

With that said, this year I'm going to switch to the Weatherby Element with an Indian Creek choke and Federal TSS number nines. And I'm going to be able to back down to just the three-inch shell and not take necessarily the beating from the three-and-a-halves I have in the past. So that's my setup. What are you going to use this year, Daniel?

I'm running, I got a Super Black Eagle II, which is kind of my go-to shotgun. And then this year I have, two years ago we launched a 3-inch, 2-ounce, 7 and 9 TSS combo load. So it's about half 7s and half 9s. And it's kind of the best of both worlds. You get your shot pellet count up with all the 9s, the 7s can help you with a little bit of range.

And so I'm going to try that. I'm, you know, I might, I don't, I get married to some loads that I really, really like, but in my job working on new products and I always try to try out what we're, what we're doing. And so I'll experiment quite a bit. And, you know, if I can kill a turkey with every load we have, that's kind of my goal.

If I can get my hands on one, Benelli has launched a 28 gauge this year in a Super Black Eagle III. And if I can do that, I'll have some of our, we load some, we have what's called a custom shop where we hand load TSS for people. And I'll try to hunt a turkey with a 28 gauge just to kind of check that box and say I did it. But if I don't get one in time, I got the 12 gauge at the ready. Gotcha.

nice nice um the next question is what is the ideal pattern um i can remember when i was new to turkey hunting you know way back in high school didn't know a whole lot about it out here in western washington it wasn't a thing and everybody had turkey targets right and then you would see you need to put four or five of them in in the neck or in the head you know a combination of and we went down that rabbit hole and then you start to look at well what's your pattern doing if you know if you were left or right like is it a consistent pattern and so i've kind of uh you

you know, migrated to the 10 inch circle and 20 inch circle. How many pellets am I getting in there? And then I'm checking to make sure I don't have like big holes in that pattern. You know, could I, is there a chance I would miss the neck or the head? I just want a very consistent pattern at 10 and 20. And really why I check my pattern at 20 with a 12 gauge is to just make sure how tight it is. Like how, how good do I have to be, you know, at 20, but then at 40 yards, like what's my lethality, like how many,

how many rounds or how many pellets or BBs am I getting inside of a 10 inch circle and a 20 inch circle? You know, and there are some standard rules of thumb, you know, 100 inside the 10, you know, at 40 is a good enough load. You know, some people are 200 inside of a 20.

But but I just kind of look at that, make sure it's consistent nowadays with TSS number nines or as you said, seven by nines, like the the ability to get that BB count up is almost I don't want to say too easy, but it's become a lot easier than it did back in the copper plated lead days.

Yeah, I always went with and kind of what we look for when we're developing products is kind of 15 hits in the head and neck, no matter what range you're at. So whether that's lead or copper, lead, you know, if you're doing 15 and you can't kill a bird with, you know, you can do under, but that's giving you a lot of insurance, right? And I do like what you said about the 40 inch circle because we've always said like edge to edge pattern. And what that means is, you know, we want even coverage in those no holes. And

so sometimes we do get so i patterned it and i'm getting holes and they get like so what so what do i do now and that's what we recommend you start to kind of try that different choke tube try a different shot size because there could just be something with that relationship between that load and in your choke tube that's just not giving you the evenness you're looking for but we always shoot like all of our standard testing is a 30 inch target at 40 yards we'll shoot every load we have and then at turkey the requirement we had was we depending on the load we wanted like

50% of those targets within a 10 inch circle. So it's always going to be tight. I love what you said about shooting at 20 yards, because man, if you're choking tight, you know, you're, you're throwing a tennis ball at them and it's, and it's hard to, it's hard to, you know, you hear a lot of guys talk about missing turkeys. It's not that it's not as hard as it sounds. So, yeah, yeah, exactly. And that was always my concern, especially hunting in Western Washington and stuff is, is that

is that bird's gonna most likely be at 15 or 20 and as tough as these easterns are to hunt in western washington because there's just not very many of them i didn't want it to you know come down to too tight of a pattern being the reason you know so in that instance we were just trying to get him to open up those are kind of the the two questions we had today now i'm going to kind of jump in selfishly to like my own own questions i have about you know everything um you know shotgun loads for turkeys so

The first thing is some of this new shot material. I know it's been around for a little bit, but you know, shot material and shot size. I grew up, you know, everything was copper plated lead back then. Heavy shot started to pick up towards, you know, the end of when I just like, I'm done developing my load. I'm just going to keep buying these three and a half inch number five federals. And, and, you know, some of these dang choke companies, you know, like comp and choke, which I was shooting back then they advised against shooting heavy shot. And so I just,

Didn't even want to like test that issue out. But let's jump into shot material and shot size and what some of the new materials have allowed us to do to 56% denser, heavier, to basically allow a BB that's a third of the diameter or two thirds of diameter to weigh the same and how that's changing the way you're designing turkey loads.

Yeah, like getting into, you know, tungsten, you kind of hit on it with heavy shots, 13 density. Metals is all like, you know, ammunition is all its mass and velocity together. So it all comes down to energy. So the denser you can make something, the more energy, the further it's going to carry its energy. And I've used this example a million times, but

they go like tennis balls and baseballs you know they're they're roughly the same size but there's just an awful lot more mass to that baseball and if you're going to fire both those at 50 miles an hour or you know miles per hour which one's going to hit the target harder and it's the baseball because there's just more mass to it so that's what the tungsten is in the analogy so it allows you to use like you said you can use a much smaller pellet so if you think like

Because it is 56% denser, think of like a number 5 copper-plated lead and a number 9 TSS tungsten super shot. Those two have the same amount of density. So if you push them out of the gun at 1,100 feet per second, they're going to hit the turkey just as hard as they do, even though that number 9 is so much smaller. And then the wind of the equation is, well, in an ounce and three-quarter, you have almost three times the pellets as you did in that copper number 5.

And you probably went to a three and a half inch cause it's gonna, you can do a little heavier payload and get more pellets on target. Right. Yeah. So, you know, now tungsten allows you to get just as many pellets as you did before, triple what you had before the same amount of energy. And you can either come at them with like a freight train of a two ounce load, or the trend is really going the other way, you know, 20 gauge, four 10 and sub gauges. And it really allows you to, to take a bird with a lot less recoil on the shoulder. Yep. Yep. Pack a smaller gun around less recoil. Um, well,

We'll get into it a little bit about how it's made some of these smaller gauged shotguns a great turkey option now. With that said, is there anything that goes into the equation, Dan, of air resistance and all that? I mean, it all adds up, but I think it has to do more with weight. But you're shooting a little number nine that doesn't have near as much wind resistance.

I've heard, you know, your comparison to number five copper plated versus number nine is that when you do get out to 40, 50 yards, that, that number nine might be flying at 200 feet per second faster by then, or, you know, number three of them. Plus once they hit the bird for penetration, you're really, you're able to drive that number nine farther one based on, um, you know, the speed that it's able to potentially keep going, but then number two, less resistance as it travels through, you know, the bird's neck and head and whatnot.

Yeah, absolutely. The less diameter you have, the easier it is going to penetrate. So you're going to get more. You're going to get into the vitals. As it flies through the air,

Kind of a rule of thumb is that as shot gets smaller, it does disperse quicker. So think of like as it scatters to the left and right of the pattern as it flies. So if we're going lead to lead, absolutely. It's a lot. You'll find no matter how much you choke, you got to choke really fine shot a lot tighter than you do bigger shot, you know, number five or number nine in lead. But they do kind of fly on par because of that increased density because it's harder to pull it off track even though it is a smaller pellet.

So I don't know if that answers your question, but you, you do see, you know, and you really sit in steel. Um, if you're shooting steel shot, like a water follower, as your shot sizes go smaller, typically you may, your pattern's going to start to widen out and it's because those smaller pellets, they lose their energy quicker, but they're a lot easier to kick to the left or right, you know? Gotcha. Um, one thing, you know, that, that kind of piggybacks on that point is, um, you know,

So there's always got to be cons, right? And we'll get into the main one, which is cost here in a little bit. But does safety become any bigger issue? I mean, ultimately, we should always know our target, identify our backdrop. But with these extended ranges that we're getting out of, you know, especially if you're down in those heavier loads of, you know, six or number five TSS, like is that has that been an issue or something we think about? Or like I said, as long as we're identifying targets, you know, looking at it backdrops and where that that.

you know that shot's ultimately going to land is it not it should be a non-issue it should be because you know your typical hunting rules apply you know know what's behind your target and beyond but it is i mean if you're using a bigger you know we don't load anything bigger than a seven in tss and kind of part of that reason it's going to carry its energy a long way so you really got to know what's behind you and you know like think of

If I was going to shoot a turkey with number six lead at 40 yards and there's another turkey about 200 yards away in the field behind it, I probably don't got to worry about it. With the TSS, it very well could carry its energy enough to hit something behind it. Other animals, you got to make sure your safety there, but for other hunters, it is something to be aware of. We've seen it on...

We have some tungsten in goose loads and HeavyShot has stories of this as well where guys are in the field, they park their trucks 400 yards away, think it's plenty fine and they'll find pepper holes from the hardness of the tungsten actually penetrating the windshield at 400 yards. Now, that's a much higher trajectory, but you do got to be careful.

sure gotcha with the you know the introduction of tss and it catching a bunch of steam you can't jump on a turkey hunting forum right now and not see everybody you know that shooting a tss load is bismuth and heavy shot and even copper plated lead is i mean we're going to start to see that phase out i mean why has bismuth not caught on you know as much for for sharing you know very similar densities the tss is at cost is it they both seem to be environmental friendly but um it seems like everybody's migrated towards tss

Yeah, it seems, you know, when we first launched the TSS, I, you know, we were talking internally and we'd always had a product called Heavyweight, which is 15 density tungsten, which was great. And people loved it. But, you know, our sales weren't as high as we kind of wanted. And we just assumed that market is what it is. And so my boss was like, what do we got to do in Turkey? And I said, you know, if we want to load the best turkey loads on the market, we'll load this TSS stuff online.

It's super expensive. We'll only sell a little bit, but we will have the best turkey load on the market. And that first year we sold four times what we thought. And now we sell almost four times what we ever did in turkey loads. So it is a price barrier. It's a lot higher.

But it seems that, I don't know, it had like this mythic kind of reputation before that, you know, a couple of smaller ammo companies were doing it. Or normally you had a hand loader buddy who knew somebody who could, you know, load you up TSS. So it is a lot more costly. It seems like people have accepted it in terms of bismuth. It's kind of tough to say. And I think it's still kind of a new thing where people are looking. I know it's one place in our lineup we haven't.

had a bismuth offering yet we're looking at doing that for turkey i know some like i will say heavy shot a lot they're a sister company of ours now and i know that they offer it and it does sell well especially states like california where everything is required to be lead free i think there's always going to be the the market for the price point and some people you know get turned off by it

If turkey hunting was more like waterfowl hunting where the volume, you know, you're burning through shells left and right, there might be somewhat of a barrier. But most people, if you're shooting over five rounds of turkey a year, you know, you're shooting a lot. So I think it's a little easier for people to bite off.

Gotcha. Yeah. So you, you kind of touched on it there a little bit is, you know, I would say maybe the only con I can find with, um, TSS is either, you know, your choke, not allowing it a little bit of scarring of the barrel, but the number one, I think would be the cost of the material. Um,

it's fairly expensive ammunition but when you go to buy just uh i believe it was a pound of number nine shot you're like in the 85 range you know and it's just it's expensive expensive bbs and uh so you want to jump into that a little bit and then maybe roll that into you know why maybe third degree is a great alternative where you're not filling your entire payload of shot with yes as you're able to mix and get a you know as you mentioned earlier some of the reasons why number seven and five and six lead may work but

But can you touch on the cost of the TSS loads and then why third degree might be a good alternative for a turkey load?

Yeah, absolutely. I want to hit on something you said quick though. You said about scoring the barrel. We really design our wads to be incredibly robust to prevent that. So just so people know, even like on something like a 410 or 20 gauge loads, everything is, we make specific wads to prevent that. So that's not as much of a risk. I can't speak for all the choke tube companies out there. Yeah.

And sometimes, and we'll get into chokes a little bit later. We'll talk about constricting tight, I guess. But if you're going to go really tight, some companies may recommend it, but some people do recommend it as well. But yeah, it's, you know, like you said, 80 bucks a pound. We buy, you know, we buy our lead and steel off the kind of world market prices. 100% of the lead that we use at Federal comes from recycled car batteries. A lot of people don't necessarily know that. So we...

We try to get a break on the price there, but they break the batteries down, they melt it down, they make it into the alloys we want. And world market price on letter steel is like $1.20 or so a pound, dollar a pound. And we're buying tungsten anywhere between $40 and $60 a pound. So that's like significant cost increase. It's a lot harder to work with. Once it's formed, it's really hard to melt it back down and reuse it into something. So

So that adds some of the price, you know, and we've always, we're always searching for, you know, less of, you know, more inexpensive ways to obtain it. But so far that just seems to be kind of where we are. So, yeah.

And then, so when you get in a third degree, like you, like a great part of auto prox, like third degree, it's about a third TSS and two thirds of lead. So it's a combo load for us. And what you're doing with that, it kind of dovetails into what we were talking about with the really tight patterns too. When we came up with third degree, uh,

Like in our brains, the best pattern would almost kind of like veer out to the left and right, like a baseball diamond, and then turn into a rectangle and go straight forward. You know, it would open up real quick and then fly and never disperse any further. Because if you are, you got a really tight bird and, you know, hopefully you got decoys in tight, you can call them enclosed because, I mean, that's the funnest part of turkey hunting. Yep. Yeah.

And so we third degree were like, what if we can make the pattern open up quicker, but still give us effective lethality at 40 yards? So we put in number seven tungsten at 15 density tungsten at the time. Now it's TSS. We have number seven TSS.

We have number five copper plated lead, which people have been hunting with forever as the core of the pattern. And then we have number six flight stopper lead, it's called, which has this little ring around it. And that stuff scatters a little faster. So your pattern between, you know, is about 20 to 30% bigger at 10 to 15 yards. And then after that, it just kind of rounds out into this nice, even turkey pattern, you know, to get you out to 40.

And those ones, the third degree seems to run at about half of the TSS, even less than that 3099 compared to like, say, you know, you're, you're 69 99 for the same size, you know? Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's a lot more of both.

Lot more affordable version to bite off and you're you know, so you're getting tungsten performance with it So it does pretty well for us It was if you're a you know There's there's different kind of turkey hunters out there some people want as many pellets as possible in that tenon circle Some people want like like you were talking a nice even pattern if you're an even you know We didn't we've always said we didn't make third degree to win pattern caught you on pellet count contest We built it to kill turkeys and it's it's your of itself to do that. I

I'm going to throw a little curveball at you since it wasn't on my list of questions here. But when we talk about lethality and range, you know, where these shots are going to be lethal, what's your standard? And then if you can maybe give me an example of like, what's a number nine TSS good for? Like, can you kill out to 60 yards or, you know, compared to like.

uh, number five lead, you know, is good out to 50 yards max. You know, we used to always go on maxes. I will, if you shoot number six is don't shoot past 35. And if you shoot number fives, don't shoot past 40. And if you shoot number four is you can kill a bird, you know? And so we used to just go by the old, you know, rules of thumb, but what does that new, um, range do? You know, as far as TSS, I know you guys only have number seven is your biggest, you know, nine is your smallest, but what would you say like the, the average ranges are, um, for those?

Yeah, any lead load, you know, we'll stick to that 40. If it's a 20 gauge and a little lighter, you know, maybe a little in it and then pattern your gun and see what your pattern is doing. You're going to carry, you know, at the velocities we're going, you're going to have more than enough energy to kill a turkey out to 40. And we've always heard stories of people who go beyond that.

With TSS, I will easily say 50. 50 is easy. And I know you can go beyond that. And I've heard stories of outrageous, outlandish type of ranges that people have shot turkeys at. As a company stance, and personally, I'll probably always stick to that 50. And then anything else is up kind of the hunter to decide beyond that. You know, we still want to promote, you know, ethical hunting in Turkey.

you know just as you start to get further out things can start to just you know variables change everything can start to expand i know if you were to pattern your gun you're going to see you know lead number five like let's say you're shooting an ounce and three quarter number nines out of a 12 gauge your pattern density is probably going to match a copper plate of number five out to 70 yards more than likely and that pellet would have enough energy to kill a turkey that far i would

would never tell anybody to go out and do that. I know, I know people do, but what it really does is like one of the first, the first turkey ever shot. I was out with a good friend of mine's dad and he was one of my teachers and kind of a mentor, you know, that he kind of taught me how to turkey hunt, which was great. But we were out and we'd set up on them and they,

They hung up or we got a gobble and then we didn't hear anything and never came back. And as soon as we stood up to walk, we looked out and way out in this field was a tom working his way towards us. So we belly crawled to the edge of the field and he's like, how far is it? I'm like, car, you know? And so it was like the last hour, last day of turkey season. So I popped up and I thought, I'm thinking it's 50 yards. And boom, and I smoked him and just dropped him on the site. And that was with our old heavyweight sixes. And when we ranged it off, it was 65 yards that I killed the bird at.

Now, if he would have said you're 65 yards, I would have belly crawled 15 yards closer because I probably wouldn't have the confidence to do it. So what it kind of allows you to do is that forgiveness factor. You know, we're excited or we don't have good ranging. And so it's going to make up some of that, your potential error for ranging season.

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One of the things that I'm most excited about with TSS and some of these new movements, and we touched on it a little bit, is that the 12 gauge is a little less required now. You know, back in the day, everybody was shooting, you know, big 12 gauges, you know, three and a half inch magnums. And I feel that with, you know, youth becoming more involved and maybe being a little bit nervous to shoot 12 gauges and, you know, them wanting to shoot, you know, youth 20 gauges or even 410s, I feel like that's been the biggest challenge.

positive from this aside from getting better patterns with our bigger 12 gauges is that now these kids can go out and a 410 is a very good option for for killing turkeys now you know and you know 28 and 20 gauges are you know perform very similar to the old 12 gauges um have you guys noticed a big movement in in the 410 market in the turkey um ammunition world um is it picks up steam and allows these youth to shoot a gun they're a lot more comfortable with out in the turkey woods

Yeah, it's been remarkable. We knew it was theoretical possible, looked at all the energy, and your 410 at our load is 1316 silencers of number 9s. That is, if I remember right, 298 pellets. And an ounce and three quarter of number 5 lead is 268 pellets, give or take. So it's a little higher pellet count, but their speeds put them at the same energy. So you're basically shooting with your old 12-gauge load.

at you know a lot a lot less recoil so we we put out the 410 and even some of you know because of the price barrier you know even some of our retailers that were first like you guys are selling turkey loaves at 410 you know i mean what are you what are you doing and you know it's gonna cost as much and

And it's been like, you know, the real shining star of the lineup. We sell almost as much 410 and one skew as we do of the four or five 12 gauge loads that we have in TSS. And I know some of that's carrying over, you know, we'll hear stories of, you know, kids shooting a 410, you know, goose hunting, you know, they're using the same load to, you know, or they're taking the kid duck hunting or,

or adults, you know, are using it. So we know there's some crossover into other stuff, but it's really like, it's kind of like this, you know, I said, check the box with 28 gauge. A lot of people are saying, I'm going to kill Turkey with a 410. And, you know, gun companies are coming up with a lot of single shots with red dots that are making, you know, super light gun, making it really easy. You know, companies are coming out with 410 chokes,

So it's really, you know, created this kind of sub market within it. And I'm, I'm like you, I don't own a 20 gauge right now that, you know, fits me. You know, I have a, I still had to use one from when I was a kid. Um,

But that's probably going to be my next purchase is like a 410 single shot that I'll use as a little turkey sniper. Yeah, my buddy Randy Milligan, who we go and hunt with out there in Kansas, he's always giving me grief. He's like, don't shoot this 20 gauge because you'll never shoot your 12 gauge ever again. It's true. Amazing patterns with some of that new. And that's, like you said, it's a shining star. Like if this is able to get more youth out there with a more effective round, shooting a gun they're more comfortable with, it's only positives.

you know, from, from some of those new ammunition. So kudos there. I was just at the NWTF show last week. And I mean, a majority, we, we, we're, we're fortunate to get quite a few shells shipped in there and a majority of what people were seeking out was 410 coming up just for, for that story. So yeah, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been really cool. That's awesome.

I'm going to touch on wads a little bit and what the heck do those things matter? I always kind of joke is that they just seem to be a little piece of plastic that I step over to go check my target or to, you know, that pile up on a waterfowl shoot that all end up at about the same range from you. Um,

some of these new TSS loads are using flight control flex wads, some of your older ammo and maybe some of your stuff still is using like the flight control and the way that these things open up, they've got the mid body slits and then they open from the rear with the pedals. And can you give us a little education because to be honest, like I've never paid that much attention to what those are actually doing and they may be probably the most important part of the whole equation.

Yeah, it really is like for people who don't understand what a wad is, is inside your shotgun shell you got usually some kind of carrier mechanism that your shot is inside of. And that carrier mechanism helps carry it down the barrel and then as it exits, separates from the shot, lets it fly through the air. Old shotgun shells would just have a felt wad. And if you didn't have any sort of choke system, it would disperse really quickly. You know, like our, like kind of the minimum acceptable pattern, you know, for a target load or a hunting load, you

The standard that we're looking for as an industry is like 70% of your pellets are within a 30" circle at 40 yards. So, wad design can make a big effect on how many pellets fit in there and also the size of the pellet. So, a typical wad goes open and it opens up like a flower petal. It just spreads out like you're opening up the fingers of your hand. You can't see me on camera.

Then that can fly through your pattern it can allow just nice dispersion and it can disrupt the pattern potentially It just depends on the wad system So the flight control wad and you mentioned the flight control flex wad The flight control wad was designed so that the gun goes off the wad comes out the barrel It's a fixed tube on the front and on the back it has these pedals and as the muzzle pressure that big muzzle blast goes boom it flares the pedals out and

and it acts like a parachute or an air brake and it makes the wad kind of slow down and lets the shot go forward in this really uniform way. And so that's how you get nice even patterns and that's what the flight control wad is known for. When you hear flight control flex, which is in all of our loads now, when we first came out with, you know, turkey loads in flight control and then, you know, black cloud was our steel load and prairie storm is lead,

If you were using a ported choke tube, you're kind of directing some of that muzzle blast to the side before the ammo gets out the barrel. And so by reducing that muzzle pressure, it wouldn't open the fins up on the back of the wad. And if the fin don't open up, then the wad doesn't necessarily slow down at all. It just kind of flies with the shot in this really tight, erratic clump.

So the FlexWOD was designed so that if you are using like, you know, there was a day where I would say, no, you can't use that Indian Creek on federal. It's just not going to work, you know, but now you can, we've made it so that you can use any ported choke tube on any one of our flight control products that says flip to the FlexWOD, you know, your main takeaway from this, you can shoot it through any choke tube and it really helps you get tight and consistent edge to edge pattern. Gotcha. So the analogy is like, you know, some of the other, uh,

wads out there are like hitting a tree going 68 to zero, you know, very, very quickly. As soon as those pedals open up it, the wads going to break away versus what you're saying with maybe like the flight control flex is you're going to slowly just apply the brakes to slow down to zero. You're not going to just like smash in, you know, and it goes to 60 to zero. You're going to slowly, slowly back away. And then that way you can control that, that pattern a little more, you know, you want it to be tight, but you don't want it to, like you said, if, if that shot stayed in the cup, you don't want it to be basically a slug.

you know, acting like a slug as it goes down range. So it's just a better way to control that process. Yeah. It's a great, it's a great analogy. When, when I was working, uh, before I worked at federal, I remember a guy told me he had turkey hunted with some of our copper plated lead. And, uh,

And when I worked, I worked retail, I gave him home, he goes, man, I hit the turkey. I flipped them over and he got up and ran away. And when he went over there, he picked up the wad and he was able to pour the shot out of it. And then he researched a little bit and he had a really heavy ported tube. And that was kind of my first lesson before I was even a company guy on, on what choke tubes to shoot with federal or not. So,

Part of my mission when I got on the SHOTSEL products was working with the development team to say, how can we make this thing work through any choke tube no matter what? We just want to make it easy on any consumer. And then it just comes down to choke tube combinations with the right gun you have and so on. It might be a little different.

I'm going to ask you just a personal question for myself. I got that Indian Creek, you know, we're going to get into chokes here in just a second, but, you know, they have what their, their wad stripper or whatever. It basically a very, very minute constriction as it goes through that choke. Does that have any effect on your guys' water? Is it designed to kind of work with that? Or have you guys did any testings with that specific, you know, design idea?

We did a lot. I don't know the specific model that you have off the top of my head, but the Indian Creek, I believe at 665 diameter was one of our core development chokes that we used when we went through because they had a pretty good name. A lot of people in the turkey market were familiar with them. We tested a lot of others, but that was one that I wanted to make sure that we got through. So I think you're going to be just fine. Perfect. Perfect. That's reassuring since it's a brand new setup, so I haven't put it all together yet. But let's

Let's use that as our segue right into patterning, you know, choking constriction. You know, the question which kind of goes back to what we've already talked about, can too much choke be a bad thing? Everything you've always heard about turkey chokes, you know, they're considered extra, extra, extra full or extra, extra full. And then some of the new advice out there, especially with like, you know, TSS is like, well, maybe you just want to go full or, you know, modified or whatever it may be. So what can you kind of tell us about, you know,

Your understanding of chokes, how much is too much, TSS versus lead, just kind of give us the rundown of what works best with federal turkey loads.

Sure, like around that 665 seems to be pretty solid, but I know people go tighter. And there's a big relationship between, you know, how is the, are the forcing cones of this model of shotgun versus that shotgun, and that's going to affect the amount of pressure, you know, your pattern is greatly affected by the length of barrel on the gun. And then, you know, how much the forcing cone is redirecting the amount of pressure as the load comes down the barrel and how long time that takes.

So there's always a relationship there, but you'll find that your typical turkey choke constrictions, you know, so like if you're,

If your gun came with a turkey choke, I don't know what that diameter might be. It's a good place to start. It'll probably work pretty well through it. Now, if you want to get more specialized and try other things, I know that like the guys from Truelock have told us, you can choke number nines really, really tight. I think they're making me down to like a 640, which is really, really tight. You know, we're kind of talking industry jargon in a way. That's incredibly tight constriction.

but sevens, they wouldn't go below 650 because they said if they did that, the pattern started to blow up. So you're like over, you know, you're over compressing it. So it's kind of a...

you, you, you do got to experiment a little bit and it does make it tricky with something like TSS. Cause every time you experiment, it's costing you money as you go down, you know? So what I'd recommend to people is if reach out to the choke tube companies that you're thinking about, you know, we may, we may have not have shot all their loads, but they've more than likely shot ours. Um, and they'll, they'll be happy to tell you, Hey, I think, you know, with, with

With your setup here, you're going to do this. I know like Rob Roberts out there, if you've got a Benelli or a Beretta gun, I mean, he really specializes in those. Reach out to Rob and he'll tell you, in your gun, you're probably going to use a T2. And he'll say that's going to give you the best pattern with federal number nines or whatever.

or whatever. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of reputable chokes out there. You know, you've got Carlson's, Truelock, Jebs, Rhino, you know, all of these specialty chokes that are out there. And one thing I had just, as you mentioned earlier, is just in my research, I didn't want to go too tight. You know, I think I ended up with a 660 for that and Vector, which, you know, fit some of those Winchesters, the Mossbergs, the, you know, it's kind of that universal choke that a lot of companies were using and ended up there at 660.

It looks like people were having, it's almost, if you're out there looking for like what choke to get and what constriction, I almost can guarantee you that if you type into, you know, Google, you know, what load you're going to shoot, what choke you want to use and what gun you have, that you're going to get some pretty good recommendations. Now, with that said, I also want to put the asterisk next to it that every gun and every load shoots different. You know, I had a Mossberg 835 with the Kampen choke. My buddy did, and they shot different shells differently.

I polished my barrel with the old Scotch-Brite trick all the way through the choke. He didn't, and we were just getting different results. There's a lot out there on choke constriction and the patterns that people are getting that may save you a whole lot of money versus just firing

you know a bunch of tss down the barrel to figure it out at least a good starting point you're still gonna have to proof it and make sure it works um with your exact setup though yeah use it you know always always start with the target load especially if you're trying to get a red dot dialed in you know start with the cheapest load you can find and and that should get you close and now the velocity change and you know subtleties may come from there but

So it's just, you know, turkey hunting has gotten like loads are so advanced, optics are so advanced, guns are so much better. It's almost gotten to be like a rifle hunter. You know, you have to, you got to dial your equipment in because you're, we're giving you more lethality, but everything's getting a little tighter and tighter with the way technology is going. So you got to be a little more on.

Yep. Yep. I'm going to ask you a little side question as far as like, you know, barrel cleaning, you know, I shoot some custom rifles and, you know, the builder said, you know, once you shoot your first five, you know, check for copper fouling, shoot five or 10 more, check one last time. And then from then, like, don't clean your gun anymore until something's happening. Like just let that gun basically be fouled.

as long as your shots don't move. What's your recommendation for cleaning shotguns? Is it similar? Does it not really matter at all when it comes to like load performance and patterning? From my experience, it doesn't, but there could be people out there who are more specialized than I am. I'm probably your average. Like if I'm on a hard duck hunt or a wet rainy day, I usually tear my gun down every time I get home. If it's not wet and dry,

dirty like I've shot my Benelli most of trap season last year I cleaned it once I think so I'm not as sore so but I do know if you're shooting a lot of lead like as a trap shooter some of those pellets kind of bubble over the top of the wad you will get lead falling build up in the barrel so you do want to you do want to clean it out in terms of a turkey you know gun and getting better patterns you know doing like what you did to the scratch bite I've heard of things like that

But yeah, you're getting a little beyond my expertise. And I know that, you know, we have guns here that we, you know, they've been test guns for years and years and years. Well, you know, and I don't think we do any special regiment to clean them. And they're probably getting shot more than most people's shotguns in the country. I can imagine you guys pull the trigger a little more than most with those test guns. Yeah, some of that stuff, I just...

I was like completely involved with Turkey hunting and it, like it consumed my life a little bit. And so it was like every little thing I could do like that. Like let's, let's polish the barrel today with a bunch of gun oil and you know, an SOS pad. And you know, it didn't prove it. It does. It did make a difference back then. But, um, you know, nowadays it seems like there's, there's even a market for basically people, you know, quote unquote, like Turkey icing or however you'd say that word. Um, you know, basically making a gun, a dedicated, like, you know, Turkey gun, Turkey killing gun. Um,

You know, and I don't know what all goes in that, but I've seen a lot of people talk about like having your gun sent off to get this or that done or, you know, make this modification.

Yeah, I kind of mentioned Rob Roberts before, and that's like he'll blow, they call it blow out the forcing cones. And it's kind of that back portion of the shotgun where the shell comes out of the chamber and where the shot first hits. And you can optimize that angle of the cone. And if you make it a little bigger, it's going to, it's less of a harder recoil, you know, when you first get hit, because you're not running into like that.

It's like wider. I don't know what's the best. You're going into a wider hallway, right? So there's less resistance for your load to go down. It helps even it out as it goes down the barrel. So it's going to help even as it goes out the barrel. And that's about the extent that I know. I've been to Rob's shop and I've talked to him and he kind of blew my mind when he was talking. Yeah.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, you could you can go down the rabbit hole with, you know, trying to get the perfect load. But that's what's nice about what we've been talking about. It seems like TSS has kind of taken a lot of that extracurriculars and just put your mind at ease that this is going to be, you know, a good enough a good enough pattern. And without doing all that extra work that we used to do back in the day on on lead or copper plated lead. So.

All right. So I want to jump into some state regulations and we did a lot of talking about number nines. I know back in 2020, there were six states back then that weren't allowing number nines to be used or sub gauge shotguns such as the 28 or the 410. So do your own research, make sure the state that you're hunting in, everything that you're set up is legal. Yeah, we've done an extensive effort. We had a good relationship with

the game and fishes too and they they like to expand with technologies and you know nine was was the big one it's it's legal in most states i like i said i wish i knew that number right off top of my head but i don't but if you should be able to use it almost anywhere and then same with the sub gauges a lot of just came down to information you know what like hey you're like everything i said you know they could just listen to this podcast and they would you know

they'd be filled in to show. So we just try to share that and say, hey, we're still killing turkeys ethically. Some states it's easier. You know, sometimes it's a full legislative regulation change or a wording change, statute change. And some it's just the Game and Fish Department signs off on it. So if there is somewhere, if you're gunning the shoot a turkey with a 410 and it's not legal, you know, just politely reach out to your, you know, your Congress people, your Game and Fish people and just say, hey, we're doing it everywhere else. Why aren't we doing it here? And just kind of let your voice be heard.

Gotcha. While we're talking about state regulations, is there still a pretty big push as far as like lead moving forward, especially whether it's copper plated or not? Can you give us any information kind of on that front and how long we can expect lead to be around in turkey loads or kind of you probably have a more up to date understanding of where that movement's going?

Yeah. So since California changed, you know, it's kind of assumed that it looks like Washington and Oregon will follow suit. You know, we do follow that situation. We try to have a lead-free solution everywhere in our lineup. We do and I do in almost every product category I have with the exception of rifled slugs.

And that's not a huge demand item for us. If California required a slug zone, which they don't, I'd probably have one even though we're working on right now. So we're very cognizant of it. We work with the NSSF, the National Shooting Sports Federation, you know, to stay up tabs with that and, you know, be informed ourselves and be as informational as we can to the industry too. You know, in terms of lead turkey shells, I think as long as there's a market for them, we'll have lead turkey in our lineup. And if, if,

legislation requires us to change, you know, we'll be, we'll be ready to support it. Hopefully that answers a bunch of your questions through my questions I had. Um, and I'm going to close this out, Dan, with if you could help a new turkey hunter with one tip, what would it be? Let's get your best turkey hunting tip. Don't call too much. Um, and that's really going to be, uh,

I guess I have two tips. It'd be like, find a good turkey hunter to take you hunting. But if

But if you don't have that option, don't call too much. Especially I'm up in Minnesota. We hunt a lot of Eastern birds. You gobble at them and then you got to give them some time to calm down and hopefully you'll hear them a little closer. And I've spooked more birds off because I've been too aggressive going for it. And I was finally able to go hunt Rio turkeys, which you can gobble your head off and it's fantastic. It's way gratifying when you're going after them, but

I would just be very cognizant of how much calling you're doing. And, you know, the birds will, will let you know when you should be done and you're probably going to have to learn that lesson on your next hunt because you already blew it. So. Yep. Yep. Yeah. It's same thing we've talked about a lot as, you know, hunting Easterns compared to your Merriams and Rios are just a different, you know, you put your running shoes on for Rios Merriams and you can call a lot more versus Easterns. You, you better be patient, sit still and don't call near as much.

Oh, it's so hard. Yeah. Well, I really appreciate having you on today, Daniel. And, uh, you know, hopefully you've, you know, have a good spring or you've already had a good spring since we're probably right in the middle of Turkey season. And, uh, yeah, thank you for, for your knowledge on everything, uh, Turkey shotgun shells. All right. I appreciate it. Anytime.

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