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Some of you may remember last Christmas my father passed down a shotgun to the next neneration that belong to my great-grandfather. A Belgian made Browning A5 light 20ga.
I have decided that this year I'm going to try to shoot a turkey with it. Most of you know that when it comes to turkeys I am a huge fan of a 28-inch barrel 12 gauge 3.5 inch anti aircraft gun shooting a $5 shell; so it almost goes without saying that this will take some adjustment.
The major limiting factors besides being a 20 gauge is it has a fixed modified choke and is chambered for 2 3/4 shells. I had originally intended to keep it all old school and shoot just a standard High brass number 5 that would have been commonly available when the gun was manufactured. After watching some YouTube videos today of patterns I'm thinking that might not be a good idea. While I enjoy the nostalgic idea of shooting a turkey with great grandfather's gun; I feel that I'll need to load it with a modern shell to overcome the lack of 3in shells or a full choke.
As as you probably guessed there's not a lot of 20 gauge 2 3/4 turkey loads out there. As a matter of fact I can't find a single one. Federal made one last year but it is been discontinued. It was one of their top of the line heavy shot loads. Which is largely been placed by the new TSS shot which unfortunately only comes in 3 inch 20 gauge loads.
I have an email out to Federal to see if they can steer me in the right direction, or perhaps if they have a few boxes still laying around.
Other than that I think it's time to grab some various boxes of shells and start shooting some paper to see where I stand.
I have decided that this year I'm going to try to shoot a turkey with it. Most of you know that when it comes to turkeys I am a huge fan of a 28-inch barrel 12 gauge 3.5 inch anti aircraft gun shooting a $5 shell; so it almost goes without saying that this will take some adjustment.
The major limiting factors besides being a 20 gauge is it has a fixed modified choke and is chambered for 2 3/4 shells. I had originally intended to keep it all old school and shoot just a standard High brass number 5 that would have been commonly available when the gun was manufactured. After watching some YouTube videos today of patterns I'm thinking that might not be a good idea. While I enjoy the nostalgic idea of shooting a turkey with great grandfather's gun; I feel that I'll need to load it with a modern shell to overcome the lack of 3in shells or a full choke.
As as you probably guessed there's not a lot of 20 gauge 2 3/4 turkey loads out there. As a matter of fact I can't find a single one. Federal made one last year but it is been discontinued. It was one of their top of the line heavy shot loads. Which is largely been placed by the new TSS shot which unfortunately only comes in 3 inch 20 gauge loads.
I have an email out to Federal to see if they can steer me in the right direction, or perhaps if they have a few boxes still laying around.
Other than that I think it's time to grab some various boxes of shells and start shooting some paper to see where I stand.