I patterned my shotgun tonight with some winchester super X copper plated turkey loads with 3" shells with 1 7/8 oz No. 4 shot with 1210 fps velocity. (It's a 12 gauge)

OUCH!! Firing those suckers out of my lightweight Yildiz SPZ ME over/under shotgun weighing in under 6.5lbs darn near took my shoulder off!!! As far as a recoil pad it has about 1/4" of padding on the end of the stock. I ended up shooting 4 times and almost cried on the last one.

I've shot a box of shells with that gun in about 2 hours hunting dove before and never even felt it. Shooting clay pigeons I've done the same and never even noticed. Inow knowthere is a BIG (okay HUGE) difference in shooting 2 3/4"; 1 1/8 oz shells and a turkey load!

I then did some target practice with my 7mm Rem Mag with a limbsaver recoil paid and it was like shooting a .22 in comparison. If I end up doing much more turkey hunting I'm either going to have to get a recoil pad for my Yildiz or get a heavier shotgun and put a nice recoil pad on it.

I'm trying to figure out my range now by counting pellet hits. I think I'll be okay out to about 30 yards with the stock full choke that came with the shotgun.

I've got some new respect for turkey loads, that's for sure!