The MeatEater Crew's Turkey Gun Setups

hey everybody I'm Steve from Meer I'm going to talk about my ultimate turkey shotgun that I will be using this spring which is actually coming right up because we're getting in late winter and I'm going to start hunting turkeys in very early spring in Mississippi that's where I'll be starting my turkey season this is the gun I'll be using now I want to start out by saying this you can shoot turkeys whatever the hell you want when I started hunting turkeys I had an old wooden stock left-handed Remington 870 that I shot with a modified choke right had all kinds of fun got all kinds of turkeys over time though um you develop little preferences and exper and I like to experiment and I've hit on a gun it's just a really like dedicated turkey gun and I'm going to explain why I use what I use now last year I used a cousin to this okay this is a beta a300 and it's in 20 gauge last year I was shooting a beta a400 in 12 gauge it was just too big and bulky um great to shoot suck to carry around with this Trimm down profile I have a hell of a turkey gun and a pretty light easy to carry easy to maneuver package they shoot great out of the box and I've been shooting them out of the box however I had this one sent to uh Rob Robert's custom shop in Batesville Arkansas and he's he's like a shotgun mechanic genius he polished the forcing cones and made me a custom choke which I'll explain in a minute and did some other work on it with Coatings and some other nice aftermarket parts just to make it like like a super souped up turkey gun I'm going to talk about how I aim now like I said I used to shoot all kinds of birds shooting off like a vented rib with a bead on it works great over time though I started like to get a little finer with my aim and I started using these little sights here front and rear sights with that little fiber optic on it for light and you can pinpoint it much better and feel more comfortable at longer shots I also really like using the Red Dot and I got into red dots hunting with my little kids because just to get them started it was easier to explain hey man put that dot on the turkey's head and pull the trigger and I wind up liking that too now I'm always a little bit suspicious of red dots because of this um you got to pay a lot of attention using a red dot make sure you got a good battery making sure you don't shatter the lens just H how you treat it right so I like to have a backup and that is why I use a lookth through Mount here okay so I can look under this and see my regular traditional iron sights I can also turn the Red Dot on and use that that way if somewhere have go wrong this and through my own recklessness or carelessness screw up my Red Dot I'm still hunting or TSA could rip the thing off I don't know what happens I got nothing to worry about CU I can still aim and shoot but I prefer to use this and I can use that and it's especially nice if something's comes sneaky peating behind you you don't need to worry about form right you look around whatever you can do I can shoot this thing with one hand if you look look and you put that red dot on that turkey you're going to get it so this why I got the best of both worlds this is a vortex spark solar okay it has a little solar panel on top you get thousands of hours out of the battery using this as well you just turn the thing on in the morning let it run all day if you're bored and it's sunny you can at least know that you're charging up your scope so that's what I use there for shot I've been using uh federals TSS for a long time now this right here is from the federal custom shop so Rob Roberts the same shotgun mechanic that worked over my shotgun does this custom load okay and so this is a this is a a TSS load the choke is matched for the load this is really important there are so many turkey loads out on the market today okay like a long time ago everybody was shooting sort of like they would have like copper plated lead or something everybody's shooting like fours and fives or four five Blends now there's so many materials and so many shot types out there make sure your shot is matched to your choke if you're shooting number nine TSS that's a big difference than shooting some copper plated fours or whatever the hell you got going on okay so match it up I've matched mine up and I have sheets of paper where I can look and see my choke my pattern density at 20 yards 30 yards 40 yards so I know what I'm doing and I have a red dot in the iron sight so I can place that pattern where I want it because as you get into really good tight patterns you don't have a lot of stray pellets meaning you need to aim man like it becomes possible to miss a turkey because you have a tight pattern that tight pattern lets you shoot Birds way farther out okay if if you get the right combo you might be shooting turkeys at 60 yards or more but what that means is up close you have a tight dense pattern that's what enables you to have a killing pattern at 60 is a very tight pattern at 10 a very tight pattern 20 so you got to be able to deliver that narrow pattern where you want it which comes down to patterning your gun and having a way to aim it one thing I don't have with me but I insist on um man I always use a sling turkey hunting when I'm just walking running and gun like to have the shotgun on my shoulder so my hands are free so I can work a pot call whatever can't stand hunting without a sling I just don't have it with me but you can picture a sling on there with it over my shoulder one last thing I'm going to mention I'm left-handed this gun's right-handed it's got an ID extra safety I can move the safety and make it Lefty I'm keeping it righty because my kids like the turkey hunt and they're going to want to shoot this gun so I'm going to shoot it righty doesn't bother me at all I grew up shooting right-handed guns um even though I am left-handed and hopefully if all goes well I'm going to have a great time with this this spring and I'll be shooting the same rig up for years to come so again beta a300 with a look through iron a solar Red Dot shooting Federal number nine [Music] TSS hello I'm Giannis with meat eater and I'm going to tell you about my turkey shotgun setup for this spring I'm shooting the petta a300 Ultima in 20 gauge very important to note that I'm shooting 20 gauge not 12 gauge anymore I just feel like with today's ammunition today's ammunition choices the performance of today's ammunition the 20 gauge is all I need um I can reach out as far as I want to with 20 gauge ammo and what makes it nice it's very easy to loan this gun out to someone with maybe smaller stature like say a wife or my kids so 20 gauge is when I'm shooting a couple things I've done to customize it not really customize it but just little additions that uh I like to do to a turkey gun to make it better for me um let's start out at the end of the barrel I've got a turkey choke specifically made for the TSS loads that are out these days uh tungsten suers shot you're not familiar with that um it's basically a metal that is uh denser and heavier than lead even um so it has the same energy at 100 yard that lead would at 40 yard obviously it differs depending on shot size but you can shoot a much smaller pellet size and still have energy long ways out there uh so anyway this is a choke that's made um to shoot TSS loads Coming Back Down the Gun I've got the uh Vortex Venom Red Dot mounted on here um it mounts directly to a pick atini rail that came with this shotgun which is pretty nice other shotguns I've had in the past you would have to either tap the receiver or figure out another way to get this uh Red Dot mounted to it this a300 comes with this pick rail to mount the Red Dot to it I've been a huge fan of red dots now for a while for turkey hunting it really allows me to get precise aim on the turkey's head or the turkeyy waddle when I'm shooting but another big reason that I like them is that it allows me to really dial in my point of impact where before if I was just shooting the bead off of a shotgun if my combination of Choke and um load shot a little bit low and left there was really nothing to do about it except for compensate by shooting shooting high and right with a red dot I can adjust it just like I would a rifle scope and make that correction so that when I point that red dot at the center of the Target or at that turkey head that's exactly where the center of my pattern is going to hit I will say it is battery operated it stinks to have a battery run out or a red dot not work in the field it's happened to me once over the last 5 years I highly recommend just changing the battery at the beginning of Every Spring you'll never have that problem even if you just left it on all spring it's not going to run out of batteries but I will be changing this one before I go out on my first hunt down here on the stock I have a uh or you could just call this a a stock pack um this one you know you can put a few shells in here but really I have it um just to raise the comb of the gun I have extremely high cheekbones so a lot of times when I get down on a gun I'm looking under the sight same thing happens on my shotgun I want to be able to just lay my cheek on there and be looking right at my Red Dot so this allows me to raise my face up off the gun a little bit and have just a direct line of sight to the Red Dot making it just that much more comfortable and it's nice to have that contact there uh last but not least I forgot to mention this is a 24in barrel uh for turkey hunting a nice compact Barrel or short barrel makes for a compact overall shotgun which makes it easier to maneuver in the turkey Woods you know when one comes in right behind you and you got to swing over and swing through brush or by other trees the short barrel is going to make it that much easier also makes it just less weight less to carry so there you go there's my turkey setup for this spring I'm excited to go out there and check it out I hope you have a Wonder wonderful turkey season good luck hey this is Ryan Callahan with meat eater and I want to show you my super awesome hands down best turkey hunting gun you will ever see in your whole darn life highly functional uh lightweight um the only thing dangerous about this gun is it is very resemblant to a toy um this is a Rossy 410 single shot shotgun break action which means if you're hunting with somebody and the thing is broken open you know it's not going to magically discharge and hit anybody uh when it's closed you're ready for business and you only have one shot so you better not miss which is why I put this uh Vortex Crossfire Red Dot on here the pistol grip stock really forces you to shoot this thing like a rifle which is what you need to do when you're turkey hunting if you miss with a shotgun it's because you have your head up not your head down and keeping your head down is the key to killing turkeys which is why this um thumb grip stock is really advantageous and it's great for firsttime hunters because it really forces your face down on the gun if you can keep your composure keep your composure you're not going to miss now 410 is the smallest legal shotgun you can hunt with in Most states um the reason for that is there's not a ton of power in a 410 but if you're shooting TSS ultra dense TSS these things are incredibly lethal so I get a Carlson's TSS specific choke which makes a very tight pattern I'm putting a ton of tiny number nine shot on that bird's head the other thing that I do is I sight this thing in to where the bulk of my pattern goes high so I'm not cracking teeth on tin little TSS shot in the meat only other fun addition to this otherwise stock shotgun is this Spartan bipod and I run a leg of each side of the bipod through my leafy top and when I'm setting up on a Wy bird early in the morning I can sit behind this gun and run my slate call underneath here behind this little tiny mini blind super lightweight hides my hand movement and uh I would say more often than not it results in a dead bird th% of the time so this is a $200 shotgun the way it's built is very self-explanatory I had three firsttime turkey hunters shoot their first birds with this shotgun and uh three shots three dead birds I even ran it over with my camper trailer it's just nice having a dedicated turkey gun something like I don't use this for anything else shells are wickedly expensive buy a cheap shotgun shoot expensive shells so if you want to especially have little kids light bodied hunting partners that don't like packing around 12 gauge shotguns all day long consider this Rossy 410 it is the only Rossy I own and uh it's a constant turkey hunting companion [Music] I'm clay from meater and I'm going to tell you about my turkey gun set up this is the weatherbe element 20 gauge that's what I carry for turkey hunting for years I carried a 12 gauge and the guns are heavier The Recoil is is is more and they're louder I have trouble with my hearing I use earplugs almost every time I shoot a gun sometimes with a turkey that's hard that's why I shoot a 20 gauge and love it I also like to shoot an automatic man in my early turkey career if a turkey walked up I was shooting twice no matter what boom boom just pull the trigger twice I like having that security just putting out a lot of a lot of shot into the air out of this gun I'm shooting a federal TSS load in 3 in and to be honest with you I've I've shot fives sixes and I can't tell that much difference in the pattern they all shoot really good out of this gun this gun shooting TSS loads patterns as good as my my 12 gauges and it's just lighter feels good in hand and man I am simple to the max when it comes to most of my firearm setups I do not use a Red Dot scope I grew up shooting Quail off the wing I like being able to look down the rib of that barrel and shoot a turkey and I've never had any trouble so I intentionally just keep this thing super simple I'm usually using an fhf gear sling and I'm using this Carlson TSS turkey choke every gun is going to be a little bit different this one works for me this is the turkey gun that I'm using this spring I hope that everybody has a really safe and a good turkey season I hope not to see you out there I hope you're not honey where I am [Music] [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: MeatEater

Views: 106,583

Keywords: steven rinella, meateater, meat eater, Steve rinella

Id: YnGYDm2WxNQ

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024