Larry Jones
Member
Has anyone used the new TSS turkey loads yet? I'm particularly interested in best patterning chokes if someone has tested them yet.
I wish I were as fortunate as you to have so much land/resources near where I live but being near Southern CA that is not the case. Most the good land is private and the public land that holds birds is saturated with "hunters" with no etiquette who will charge into your setup as you are calling in a bird, seriously. Gas here is $3.75 a gallon right now so driving 300 miles a couple days of scouting and a couple days of hunting gets expensive compared to ammo. Back when i had access to a private ranch I would get my 3 turkeys a season and help my buddies too but after the drought things are much tougher and the birds moved to mostly private land and I have to hunt public now. A guided hunt gets $750 and up which is too much for my budget. I have a dedicated turkey/coyote gun that I don't mind spending the money on the TSS as I spend way more on gas, food, etc than on ammo, I just want to stack the deck in my favor as my chances are much fewer these days.Correct me if I'm wrong but does not the TSS shells sell for about $50 W/tax for five?
$10 bucks a shell VS $2.30 for WW LB/XR is quite pricey IMHO.
For ME PERSONALLY 90-95% of my enjoyment I get from turkey hunting is calling them into gun range and getting to watch them do their awesome displays of going into full strut and gobbling prior to shooting them.
Again for me turkey hunting is so enjoyable because unlike deer that I usually only see for a few moments, sometime seconds prior to having to take my shot, with turkeys I have had them displaying in front of my decoys for as long as 10 to even 15 minuets of gobbling and displaying before I or one of my sons took their Tom.
In the last 20+ turkey seasons I have never not had a solid opportunity to kill a mature Tom I called into gun range. Granted it often took more than one hunt, but save for two years in which I just flat out screwed up I have always been able to get a Tom within my effective gun range. Now a days if I don't take a Tom it will be due to me having screwed up and not because I couldn't get a Tom into range.
Besides I find it a bit cost prohibitive to spend $75-$100 if not more to pattern and sight in my gun, and yes I do so before every turkey season, granted once sighted in the fallowing seasons it's only a few shots at 40 and then 50 yards, but what happens if as I am considering I go to Vortex red dot sights for mine and my sons guns? Even if I'm the only one using TSS it still would be very expensive to sight in a red dot out to 50 let alone 70 yards with TSS. But we are all free to spend our $$$ how ever we choose to. I'm more than happy with my effective range and rate of success using WW/LB/XRs.
Just my thoughts.