Broken Brow
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 24, 2011
- Messages
- 69
Well, it was a pretty nice weekend, so I decided to do some shooting. I went to a local poultry distributor and got a case of turkey necks to do some penetration tests on the H-13 3.5" 2.25 7's. They are sold for dog food. A case of 25 ran me $18. As a side note, the muscle and bone structure of these farm turkey necks were pretty massive compared to a typical Eastern turkey. I would strongly suspect that the penetration on a wild tom (especially a wild jake), would be better than the numbers I was getting below.
I placed the necks at various distances from 40 to 65 yards. Estimating the penetration was a little subjective. I did not want to count the pellets that skimmed the edges of the neck. I tried to limit my count to the ones that passed through the thickest part of the neck. I found that the penetration varied from shot to shot.
I started at 40 yards to get a baseline since there has been a lot of success at that range or closer. I found about 53% of the shot exiting at 40 yards.
Next, I moved back to 50 yards. The penetration ranged from 45% to 49% of the shot exiting.
The patterns of most turkey guns have broken down at around 60 yards. The penetration was still 34% at that distance.
At 65 yards, I found around 22% exiting the neck. My wife was a necropsy tech in a past life, so I put her to work on the 65-yard necks. What we found was that even though only 22% of the pellets completely passed though, about 60% of the remaining pellets made it to the far side of the neck. Of those that were stopped on the near side of the neck, 1 was lodged in the bone, and 1 smashed into the bone and stopped.
It appears the H-13 7's can still reach and punch through bone at 65 yards. They should kill effectively as long as you are still getting a pattern density of 100 pellets in a 10-inch circle and have the densest part of the pattern centered on the neck.
I placed the necks at various distances from 40 to 65 yards. Estimating the penetration was a little subjective. I did not want to count the pellets that skimmed the edges of the neck. I tried to limit my count to the ones that passed through the thickest part of the neck. I found that the penetration varied from shot to shot.
I started at 40 yards to get a baseline since there has been a lot of success at that range or closer. I found about 53% of the shot exiting at 40 yards.
Next, I moved back to 50 yards. The penetration ranged from 45% to 49% of the shot exiting.
The patterns of most turkey guns have broken down at around 60 yards. The penetration was still 34% at that distance.
At 65 yards, I found around 22% exiting the neck. My wife was a necropsy tech in a past life, so I put her to work on the 65-yard necks. What we found was that even though only 22% of the pellets completely passed though, about 60% of the remaining pellets made it to the far side of the neck. Of those that were stopped on the near side of the neck, 1 was lodged in the bone, and 1 smashed into the bone and stopped.
It appears the H-13 7's can still reach and punch through bone at 65 yards. They should kill effectively as long as you are still getting a pattern density of 100 pellets in a 10-inch circle and have the densest part of the pattern centered on the neck.
