I shot my gun yesterday using the 10 inch circle that i read on the patterning thread and it ended up being exactly 100 pellets inside the circle. Last night i went to walmart and bought some h.s strut targets just to see how many pellets would be in the head and i ended up getting 30 in the head at 30 yards stepped back to 40 and put 15 pellets in the head. The hs strut target says the optimum amount of pellets is 5 but i didnt know if that was right or not. In your guys opinion is this good enough to put them on the ground or do i need to try something different. I've killed turkeys before but never really patterned my gun and paid that much attention to it so any help is appreciated.

100 pellets is considered the minimal acceptable pellet count at 40 yards in a 10" circle. Equally important is a uniform distribution. Sounds like you have a 40 yard gun with that load and choke (whatever it is).

If you posted a picture it would help add more information.

Would also be interesting to know the gun, barrel length, choke, load and shot size that you used.

MC

all the stats are wrote on the target..you cant see every pellet but i counted them and i put the wrong oz on one of them..they are both 1 3/4 winchester h.v loads its a kicks gobblin thunder .655 in a 870 super mag

Thanks for posting the pics

The picture on the left has a much more uniform distribution of pellets than the one on the right. I certainly cannot argue with the number of vital hits however.

The easiest way to improve that patter, should you desire to do so, is move to Hevi-shot 2oz #6. The choke you have is pretty tight, maybe too tight for Hevishot but you may get away with it using smaller shot sizes like #6 or #7.

It is possible that the .655 is overconstricting the lead loads you are shooting and you may get better patterns with a more open choke - without a larger target it is hard to tell.

Good luck

MC

i shot it again 20 pellets in the head at 40 so i think i may stick with this setup but just stick with 40 and closer

my dad has killed birds with very few pellets before so not necisarilly quanity but where the pellet's hit

you should be good out to 40 yards. If you want to play some, polish your barrel and get some Hevi-13 #6 shot. I bet your pellet count will increase some.

This may be a dumb question but how do i polish my barrel? Is it the same as cleaning? I've never done that before but have heard of alot of people on here doing it and saying it helped. Thanks in advance.

I'll bore you (pun intended) with a little bit of the 'why' behind this concept first:

When your shotgun barrel was made, they took a steel cylendar and ran a boring tool down the middle to ream out a 12 gauge hole (readers digest version). They did a bit of touching up and what not, but if you look down the thing, you can still plainly (especially on your 870) see the original tooling marks from where the metal was cut away. These small pits and lands attract and hole fouling, plastic residue from the wad and all sorts of unsavory stuff. It is a real witch to remove it and takes a lot of elbow grease. Most folks never (and I mean never) clean their guns good enough to know it exists, it takes a real scrubbing to even loosen the stuff up enough to be seen. The bore snake might do a good enough job to pass inspection, but trust me... its NOT really clean!

The only way to prevent this, is to eliminate those tooling marks. Enter: Bore Polishing.

There are a couple of ways you can go about this... some are cheap and effective, others are more scientific and costly.

1) (First Class) - You can bring your gun to a gunsmith, ask him to polish your barrel and lengthen your forcing cone and hand over some legal tender in exchange for his services.

2) (Business Class) - There are a number of products on the market designed to do exactly what we are talking about. A company named Flex-Hone (designed for removing machining and tool marks from the inside of engine blocks) makes a product uniquely called the Flex-Hone; the idea being that engine cylenders and shotgun barrels really ain't all that uncommon after all. The Flex-Hone is, for lack of a better description, a special drill attachment that litterally polishes and smoothes the inside of a shotgun barrel. The device itself looks like a regular bore brush that has some sort of infection, or has started growing coral, as there are several balls of compound on the ends of the bristles (this is what does the work). The whole lot is attached to the end of a flexible (hence flex hone) twisted metal rod that attaches to a common high speed drill. Pick up some flex-hone oil and get to work. There are detailed instructions available with some simple websearches. Just google 'polishing a shotgun bore', and you'll find plenty of useful info.

3) (Coach) - For the rest of us (and I'm probably finally going to break down and order a flex-hone this year anyway). I have always used JBs Non-Embedding Bore compound. I take a stout aluminum shotgun rod (usually just two sections), and screw a bronze brush into the end. Then I wrap two patches around the brush and coat it up with JBs. I chuck the whole works up into the DeWalt and being VERY careful not to hit the walls of my barrel, let the big dog eat in smooth even strokes for about 2-3 minutes. Clean out with oil patches. Then repeat the process with JBs Bore Bright. You'll notice a huge difference right off the bat. Its not exactly scientific, and if the barrel starts to get hot... you need to keep the thing moving.

FWIW: I immediately noticed HUGE improvements across the board with my patterns... and not just out of my turkey guns. Waterfowl loads, buckshot, target loads.... all of them... nice and even.

It makes your guns immensely easier to care for as well. I can shoot a box of target loads and you can't hardly tell my gun has been fired by looking down the bore. None of that crap has anything to stick to.

I give a lot of my choke tubes the same treatment. A good custom tube will already be polished when you take it from its originial package.... thats part of why you pay a premium for it.

Good luck. Take your time.

ok i borrowed a choke and if i like it i can buy it..its a primos jellyhead .665 what shells should i shoot out with this setup