This isn't meant to be a smart remark or anything... but if I take a 3d target, like a can the approx height of a turkey and shoot it... I know what my pattern looks like without shootin a piece of paper. I know if I pulled the shot, I know if I have holes... I dont care what happens outside of that can... I just know the can is dead, and so wont a turkey... I don't care if you've shot 200 turkeys over the last 50 years or whatever... count all the holes you want... If you put a beer can on a stick and rock its ass at 35 yards... Turkeys goin down. Anything outside of that is details that wont matter if ya cant shoot.
No offense taken and none intended to you. But I have seen shotguns that threw the center of their patterns 6 inches low and 6 inches right at 40 yards. Shooting at a large piece of paper with a bullseye of some sort on it will reveal such a fact imediately. Shooting at a small target ehhh, maybe not so much.
Lets say you carry a new choke and a few different types of shells out for a test drive. You fire at a can 40 yards away with shell 1 and approach it to see that there is only a few holes in it. So you think, "well that shell sucks." But maybe not. For all you know it threw a great pattern but to the left or right of the can.
As for the 100 pellets inside 10 inches, it's just sort of a general guideline for what many consider to be a good pattern. Obviously it doesn't mean if you are only getting 90 pellets in a 10 inch circle turkeys are going to laugh and walk off from you. And yes we know a turkeys head isn't 10 inches wide. Having a good dense pattern inside a 10 inch circle gives you a little wiggle room for not being perfect with your shot. Pull the shot a few inches? Matters not as long as you keep his head inside that 10 inch cone of death. It's about there not being anywhere his head can find a gap inside that circle. Let me show ya.
Draw a turkeys head anywhere in this circle that he could have survived.
And because I know exactly where the center of my pattern is going (adjusted perfectly to point of aim with a red dot scope) I can center Mr Toms head like this in that pattern.
