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Call me crazy but...

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I'm going hunting tomorrow morning. I haven't been in the woods since November. There is less than a week left in the Alabama turkey season and I have a gun I haven't even shot yet.

It's what others here have affirmed to be a Narragansett Arms smoothbore of .60 caliber.

Well, I ent shot it yet. I haven't patterned it. I've never even loaded a smoothie flintlock until tonight. I didn't even have loose shot in the house so I popped open some 20ga #5 magnums and harvested the shot. I cut some cards from card stock and am using felt pads as wads. I went with 70ish grains of 2f and 70gr(about 1 ounce) of shot. One card and felt wad over powder and the same for the shot.

Call me crazy, but the last time I decided to go hunting for the first time as an adult, with little to no prep(apart from sighting the rifle), the freezer got filled in 20 minutes.

I've hunted turkeys for many years, just never with a muzzleloader. Watch out Tom, here I come.
 
Howdy Cattywompuss. Good luck with your hunt. I am shooting a .56 smoothie this year. I've been shooting BP rifles and pistols for nearly thirty years, but am fairly new to smooth bores, and figured it out on my own pretty much. While patterning my .56 the best load I found for a good, tight, turkey pattern was the same 70 grains of powder/70 grains of shot and it is working very nicely. I also resorted to busting open some old shot shells of the #4 magnum and #6 shot and mixed them, as nobody around here has any shot available. Most of the other guys on here know a ton more than I do about smoothbore shooting, but thought I would let you know my experience as it is similar to yours as far as load and bore size goes. Your bore is a touch bigger than mine so you might want to try upping the volumes a bit when patterning, but keep it close and tight and you should do fine. What part of Bama are you in? I'm about 20 minutes above the state line in Giles County. Good luck and tell ole' Tom I said high...
 
Well, old Tom was nowhere to be seen or heard today. Not surprising given how late it is in the season. All the hens are setting and the Toms are calming down.

Either way, cleared the old .60 against a berm before heading home and at 10 yards it does some damage to dirt.

Sunday is the last day of the season and I probably won't get back out there. So it's time to start some load development for the fall season. East Alabama(just a few counties) is blessed with a fall season.
 
OK, I'll call you crazy! But you got out into the woods and that is never a bad thing...

Indeed! It's a modest piece of nearly vertical land occupied by the in-laws, but given the extreme privilege I have had of living on and professionally managing two 1100 acre pieces of land on the Chattahoochee at a youngish point in my career, I can't complain.

I've told my wife we can never own land, on account of I've spent so much of life maintaining and managing land that I don't have the patience for it anymore. But, randomly wandering along my in-laws river ridge land, not knowing where the property line is, is good enough for now.

In a former life property lines were something other folks worried about. Strutting Toms and sparring Bucks, AND iding owls, were my front porch TV. Shooting a 8+ point buck was merely a matter of storming out of the house with a rifle at half-time when UGA was losing to Florida.

As it is, I'm approaching 40. I've killed alot of God's creatures, and I will kill more if they wander into my sights. But a day in the woods, gun dialed in or not, is better than a day at "work".
 
Just a suggestion for when you are working up load development. You could consider upping the shot to 80 grains by volume to see how that helps pull the pattern. It worked for my 20 gauge.
 
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