Is the Expen$$$ive Turkey ammo worth it?

[Amos Keeto]

You can shoot turkeys at 80 yards? I'm apparently doing it wrong.

Yup!
.22 Mag
.22 Hornet
I've killed lot's of turkey with a .22 Hornet and .22 Mag. The small bore rifle is a "Fall, Turkey, tom only" tool!

 

[dr.mooseknuckles]

Ammoseek is your friend. You can get TSS for much less if you use that site.
Bought 3 boxes of #9 TSS for a .410 at $8 a shell. Yes, it's expensive. But it's also, IME, much more effective than lead.

I'm an avid turkey hunter, a good caller, but they're also sly birds. I want every advantage to kill one cleanly, particularly on public land where I may walk 10 miles in a day. I want my 20 gauge or .410 to be as effective as possible.

If I was on private ground, in a field with decoys and in a blind, I'd use a 12 gauge with 3.5 inch #5 or 6 lead and not think twice about it since I wouldn't be walking that much.

For run and gun, even on may family's land in Alabama, I prefer my 20 gauge or 410 as they're lightweight.

To each his own.

 

[fatlander]

——

I want every advantage to kill one cleanly, particularly on public land where I may walk 10 miles in a day.

—-

To each his own.

You don’t have to have every advantage. It’s okay if the turkey wins.


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[Amos Keeto]

You don’t have to have every advantage. It’s okay if the turkey wins.


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From 2003 to about 2011 and between 2015 and 2019, I was really successful.
Not because I was that good at calling, or shooting, or locating.
I just had a 250 acre lease that was lousy with turkeys. Went through a drought between 2010 and 2014. Most turkey eggs were fried before they could hatch. Summertime temps went as high as 117°F!
Then the pox moved through and I had orthopedic problems. This is the first time in years there seems to be enough time, birds and energy on my part to partake again!

.......and "YEAH!", the turkeys needs to win more than they lose! LOL!

 

[ElDiablito]

Not if you`re really turkey hunting, no, you`re not doing it wrong.

That’s like saying you aren’t really bowhunting elk if you shoot them at 50 yards (instead of calling them to 5 yards)….

 

[Amos Keeto]

That’s like saying you aren’t really bowhunting elk if you shoot them at 50 yards (instead of calling them to 5 yards)….

Yes, bagging a 25 pound tom with 1.25" spurs and a 12" beard is quite an achievement, but watching a tom, strutting, drumming and gobbling as he slowly makes his way across a hundred yards of wide open ground is an adrenaline high that can only be topped by the trigger break at 15 yards!

I don't hafta have 'em up in my lap, but it ain't bad!

 

[the hack]

Here's the deal, you could kill 'em with a musket but TSS stones them. Because science... Buy a box a year and never look back.

 

[Turkeytider]

That’s like saying you aren’t really bowhunting elk if you shoot them at 50 yards (instead of calling them to 5 yards)….

I guess a lot of it depends on why you`re there in the first place. The experience has changed for me over the years.

 

[Taudisio]

Yes, bagging a 25 pound tom with 1.25" spurs and a 12" beard is quite an achievement, but watching a tom, strutting, drumming and gobbling as he slowly makes his way across a hundred yards of wide open ground is an adrenaline high that can only be topped by the trigger break at 15 yards!

I don't hafta have 'em up in my lap, but it ain't bad!

I called at one for 3 hours, he must have crossed 3 fences before he came in off private. Shot him at 2 yards. My third favorite turkey hunt ever.

 

[dr.mooseknuckles]

Maybe I didn’t articulate my post in an understandable fashion for you poors who can’t afford $50 worth of shells.

I don’t want a turkey to flop around. I want it stone dead when I pull the trigger. Of course I want the bird at 25 yards. Sometimes though, depending on the situation, cover, etc., distances aren’t judged accurately brush is in the way.

TSS helps take out the **** up factor and kills birds dead. Longbeard XR was the best to me, till I shot TSS.

Some of you critics probably also buy high end custom rifles and optics for popping an elk or mule deer over 500 yards with an equally expensive cartridge.

The birds are having a hard time all over the Southeast for various reasons. To me that means giving a damn by making sure I’m giving them the quickest death and preventing wounding/maiming a bird with the best ammo possible. The same as I do for cartridge selection when deer hunting or elk hunting.

As I said in the previous post, to each their own. Hating on TSS shows ignorance, which is typically a characteristic of poors.

As Mr. French eloquently stated in The Departed “This is America. If you don’t make money, you’re a ******* douchebag”


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[Amos Keeto]

@ dr.mooseknuckles
I think I'm a bit offended by, "... for you poors who can’t afford $50 worth of shells. ..."

I "CAN" afford $50 worth of ammo. I just choose not to. A one ounce load of #8's out of my 16 gauge within 30 yards will do the trick every time!

I'm more perturbed by the people who buy the "Magic TSS" shot and expect to kill turkeys at advanced ranges. ....and you KNOW that "Skeeter" or "Possum" is gonna try!

As I've stated previously, if TSS wasn't so expensive, I'd probably buy a box or two.
As long as I can call turkeys in close enough to kill with lead shot, I see no reason to spend $6-$8/shell for ammo.

Also know that I'm the product of two men (dad and granddad) who came up through the "Great Depression".
They bought "good" ammo. Never cheap ammo; or expensive ammo. You didn't "waste" ammo.
My grampa shot a Marlin 336RC in .30-30 Win. It would hold 7 shells. Six in the magazine and one "up the spout". In the 21 years I knew my grampa, he NEVER bought a box of .30-30 ammo. A store downtown would sell him 7 shells.

So, while I don't have Donald Trump money, neither am I destitute. I just try to spend my money wisely.

 

[fatlander]

Maybe if we all stopped the mental masturbation on unnecessarily over priced gear and put a little more towards real conservation work, the turkeys wouldn’t be struggling as bad as they are. Just a thought.


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[Taudisio]

Maybe I didn’t articulate my post in an understandable fashion for you poors who can’t afford $50 worth of shells.

I don’t want a turkey to flop around. I want it stone dead when I pull the trigger. Of course I want the bird at 25 yards. Sometimes though, depending on the situation, cover, etc., distances aren’t judged accurately brush is in the way.

TSS helps take out the **** up factor and kills birds dead. Longbeard XR was the best to me, till I shot TSS.

Turkeys shot in the head, with ANYTHING, flop around. It seems the better they are hit in the head the more they flop. If you don’t want them to flop, aim for their body. In my experience, you have a better chance to mortally wound and lose the turkey if you shoot it in the body beyond your shot’s effective range, so I do agree that the heavier TSS will excel at that task. My family really enjoys turkey meat, and I HATE picking pellets out of the meat. I will continue to shoot them in the face, and I will continue to challenge myself and not shoot them beyond whatever range I decide is the maximum that day. I shot 3 boxes (fed, rem, hevi) of TSS last year on paper, and into a testing media. It is better than lead. I don’t think anyone can argue that. It is NOT necessary to kill a bird under 40 yards. TSS is like a 50bmg (or instead whatever cartridge here) in the rifle world. Yea it works. Yea it hits hard. Yea it’s expensive to feed. No it’s not the only effective option for shooting a whitetail under 200 yards. I hunt turkeys for the challenge of getting them in close. Turkey meat at the grocery store is cheaper than TSS and it will help save your hurting turkey population in the southeast. It also doesn’t flop.

 

[Amos Keeto]

Maybe if we all stopped the mental masturbation on unnecessarily over priced gear and put a little more towards real conservation work, the turkeys wouldn’t be struggling as bad as they are. Just a thought.


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Got caught up in the Knight & Hale "Pretty Boy/Pretty Girl" fad back years ago.
Blew $100 + shipping. Hauled that mess around for 2 years!
They've been hanging in the shed for over 10 years now....unused!

 

[Amos Keeto]

Turkeys shot in the head, with ANYTHING, flop around. It seems the better they are hit in the head the more they flop. If you don’t want them to flop, aim for their body. In my experience, you have a better chance to mortally wound and lose the turkey if you shoot it in the body beyond your shot’s effective range, so I do agree that the heavier TSS will excel at that task. My family really enjoys turkey meat, and I HATE picking pellets out of the meat. I will continue to shoot them in the face, and I will continue to challenge myself and not shoot them beyond whatever range I decide is the maximum that day. I shot 3 boxes (fed, rem, hevi) of TSS last year on paper, and into a testing media. It is better than lead. I don’t think anyone can argue that. It is NOT necessary to kill a bird under 40 yards. TSS is like a 50bmg (or instead whatever cartridge here) in the rifle world. Yea it works. Yea it hits hard. Yea it’s expensive to feed. No it’s not the only effective option for shooting a whitetail under 200 yards. I hunt turkeys for the challenge of getting them in close. Turkey meat at the grocery store is cheaper than TSS and it will help save your hurting turkey population in the southeast. It also doesn’t flop.

See the two turkeys in my avatar?

Two birds came off a roost and walked up to the edge of a pasture. The jake ran out to some hens in a pasture. When I shot the first bird, he hit the ground flopping.
The second bird was 75 yards away, strutting for another group of hens. When he witnessed the first bird flopping, he walked, then ran to the downed bird and began flogging him. When he stepped back and raised his head to admire his handiwork, he joined his buddy on the ground.

I had an opportunity to do the same thing a year later.....except.....the first bird hit the ground and never wiggled. Bird number two wasn't the least bit interested in hanging around to see what happened. If bird 1 had been flopping a little, I may have been able to pull off 2 doubles in 2 years!
Death throes aren't signs of life.

 

[Taudisio]

I shot this one in the back of the head, while he was mounted on my laydown hen decoy at 8 yards. He flopped for a solid 5 minutes. Anyone that says this bird was alive while he was trying to fly in the grass is ignorant.

 

[Turkeytider]

Turkeys shot in the head, with ANYTHING, flop around. It seems the better they are hit in the head the more they flop. If you don’t want them to flop, aim for their body. In my experience, you have a better chance to mortally wound and lose the turkey if you shoot it in the body beyond your shot’s effective range, so I do agree that the heavier TSS will excel at that task. My family really enjoys turkey meat, and I HATE picking pellets out of the meat. I will continue to shoot them in the face, and I will continue to challenge myself and not shoot them beyond whatever range I decide is the maximum that day. I shot 3 boxes (fed, rem, hevi) of TSS last year on paper, and into a testing media. It is better than lead. I don’t think anyone can argue that. It is NOT necessary to kill a bird under 40 yards. TSS is like a 50bmg (or instead whatever cartridge here) in the rifle world. Yea it works. Yea it hits hard. Yea it’s expensive to feed. No it’s not the only effective option for shooting a whitetail under 200 yards. I hunt turkeys for the challenge of getting them in close. Turkey meat at the grocery store is cheaper than TSS and it will help save your hurting turkey population in the southeast. It also doesn’t flop.

I`ve seen turkeys hit in the body inside of 30 yards, flip over, get up and keep running dragging a wing. It happened to me many years ago and it made me sick. It was one of the main occurrences that formulated my personal promise to myself and the birds of no shot beyond 40 yards, and head and neck only. If at all possible, I don`t want him to know what hit him. I owe him that. I don`t care what kind of ammunition they invent. I think TSS is great. It`s revolutionized turkey hunting with sub-gauge guns. You hear about these 60 and 70 yard shots on turkeys. I`m sure it happens. What you don`t hear about are the cripples that you`ll never get me to believe don`t happen at those ranges. Just one guy`s position on the matter!

 

[wesfromky]

For me, the advantage of TSS is it lets me shoot a much lighter weight, and much lower recoiling .410, and still be viable out to 35-40 yards. Check out the patterns on 9.5 .410 tss loads.

 

[dtrkyman]

I travel all over the country every spring for a couple months hunting and guiding. I hand load my own TSS so I can shoot a light weight sub gauge gun.

On a good year I will kill 10 birds personally, so 60$ for ammo is pretty much a non factor, could I kill them with 20$ worth of ammo, most of them, but I enjoy loading my own.

I have only killed 2 birds over 40 yards since using my handloads for the past 6 or 7 seasons, they shoot incredible patterns so I can misjudge a little and not worry being I don't stretch it too far.

I agree with the guys worried about folks shooting birds at crazy distance, and the fact those clowns are now killing those birds!

I have cleaned many birds over the years with some other pellets in them that were not mine!

Get em close and kill every one you shoot at, but not too close, that is a whole other issue!

 

[ElDiablito]

Also know that I'm the product of two men (dad and granddad)

Hmmm……I’d probably keep that to myself….lol