“If you don’t quit flinching you will never kill a gobbler,” the older man yelled at a boy I guessed to be about 14 years old. It was at a public shooting range and, from a distance, I had been watching the youngster shoot turkey loads from a 12-gauge single shot shotgun. The boy reeled back with each shot at the turkey head/neck target on the pattern board. His pattern center was getting farther and farther from the gobbler’s head with each shot. I was witnessing a potential turkey hunter and lifetime shooter being turned off to shooting sports in general.
I eased up to the youngster and his father and started talking to them about the load they were shooting. It was a 3-inch turkey load with 2 ounces of lead shot. The single-shot shotgun probably didn’t weigh much more than 5 pounds. That youngster was taking more than 60 foot-pounds of recoil with each pull of the trigger, roughly the equivalent to a .458 Win. Mag shooting a 500-grain elephant bullet.
No wonder the kid wanted to go home. I would too. Read more….