Turkey Time | Muzzle Blasts Archives March 2020
This is an article that appeared first in the March 2020 Issue of Muzzle Blasts Magazine.
Turkey Time by Darryl Quidort
My pickup coasted to a stop long before daylight on a clear spring morning and I quietly opened the door. Using the dim light from the open truck door, I carefully measured 95 grains of FFg black powder for each barrel of my 10 gauge muzzleloading shotgun. After pushing two over powder wads firmly down each tube, I dumped 1 5/8 ounces of #6 lead shot into each barrel. Two overshot cards topped off my turkey loads. I would wait until daylight to place a #11 percussion cap on both nipples of the shotgun.
The big Pedersoli 10 gauge magnum was an unexpected gift from an aging friend who wasn’t able to hunt anymore. The very best gift is one that you don’t expect and really don’t deserve. I really wanted to take a wild turkey with the gun, for his pleasure as well as my own. I had spent some time shooting various combinations of shot and wads at large pieces of tablecloth
paper to develop a good turkey load for the gun. The gun was equipped with interchangeable choke tubes. Studying the shot patterns on the papers gave me faith that, full choked, the big 10 gauge would cleanly take a wild turkey out to nearly 40 paces.
Just as a pink glow developed in the eastern sky I slipped into my pop-up blind which was set up on the edge of a natural clearing in the still leafless hardwoods. Then I poured a cup of coffee and sat back to enjoy the morning. There were a few gobbles off in the distance at daybreak, then all was quiet. Some wood ducks left the nearby beaver ponds and whistled by overhead on their morning flight. A few deer bobbed heads and stomped feet at the sight of my blind as they passed by. Although there seemed to be no turkeys in the area, I used a homemade box call to periodically give out a few hen yelps. My calls received no response. As sunlight touched the tops of the trees around my clearing, songbirds began their symphony. A Red-Tailed hawk soared by close over head with his wings outspread. By cupping my ears I could actually hear the cool morning air feathering through his primaries. Early spring is a great time to be outdoors.
Every day is a new day and you never know what will happen when hunting wild turkeys. A quiet hour went by, then a turkey suddenly burst out of the woods and went running across the clearing in front of me. Big Tom! I quickly grabbed my call and gave him a couple of loud clucks. He stopped, looked, even puffed up a little, and then ran on like a kid late for the school bus. “Strange,” I thought. “Well, so much for him.”
To my surprise, twenty minutes later another gobbler came out at the same place and ran into the clearing on the exact route as the first one. Again, I gave out a couple of loud clucks. He stopped, looked, puffed up, even gobbled once, then turned and ran just like the first one. But this time I was ready. I swung the heavy barrels just ahead of the running bird and touched off a shot. Through the smoke I saw the 10 gauge knock him flat but, due to the extended range, I was afraid he wouldn’t stay down. When I quickly rounded the blind on the run he was already up and running away. After a hot pursuit, I got close enough to finish him with the second barrel. Thank goodness for double barrel shotguns!
That adult Eastern wild turkey was a big, beautiful bird with a full beard, nice spurs, and glossy, colorful feathers. I considered him a trophy taken with a muzzle loading shotgun.
I took a couple more nice toms with that percussion gun before the dream of a flintlock double barrel began to form in my head. I wasn’t looking for an original because I wanted a shooter, one that I could enjoy hunting with. Besides, I couldn’t afford the four figure price tag of an original anyway. If there was to be a flintlock double in my future I would have to build it myself. Although I had been hunt-ing with flintlock rifles for several years, I had only built one rifle myself. I was warned that building a double barrel flintlock was more involved than just building two guns; it was building two guns that had to fit and work together. But the dream wouldn’t go away.
At the NMLRA spring shoot in Friendship, Indiana, I found a good set of original Damascus 12 gauge barrels. As I gathered the assorted parts needed from the many vendors present, I realized that there is no “kit” for building this gun. That meant that the individual parts weren’t guaranteed to fit together. With a block of walnut, the old barrels, a box of parts, and the book Recreating the Muzzle-Loading Shotgun, by William Brockway, I went home to build my dream gun. My goal was to finish it for the following spring turkey season.
To say it was a learning experience would be a vast under-statement. I learned a lot! Many hours were spent measuring, inletting, fitting, and finishing the gun. When finally completed, my shotgun wasn’t a copy of any particular original flintlock but it was the gun I had been dreaming about for more than a year. And wow! This gun was FUN to shoot. Ka-Boom! A cloud of thick, white smoke rolled out in front of the gun after each shot. I liked it! And, this The authors flintlock double barrel and a 25 pound wild turkey.
was not your ordinary, everyday type shotgun. No one else that I knew of had a gun like this.
My next challenge was to develop a turkey load for the gun. I wanted a tight, dense pattern of shot for wild turkey because a headshot is the best way to put the big, tough birds down. I started experimenting with various combinations of wad column, shot size, powder charge, and distance to the target. I shot the gun a lot, drew circles over the shot patterns, and counted holes inside the circles to compare different loads. It was fun but, in the end, I realized that the old 12 gauge barrels would never shoot a pattern like a modern shotgun. Both barrels are cylinder bore; straight tubes with no choke. Cylinder bore barrels are proper for the time period of a flintlock double barrel shotgun but they would limit the range at which I could take a turkey.
It was time for a reality check. It seems there are “inherent disadvantages” when hunting with a flintlock shotgun. The lock time is slower, the shot travels at a lower velocity, and the cylinder bore barrels call for closer range shots.
I was faced with two choices, either accept the challenge and hunt like our forefathers did, or give in to modern technology; interchangeable choke tubes. As a long time traditional bowhunter I’ve always accepted the challenges that come with using more primitive equipment. Therefore, I chose to hunt with my flintlock double “as it is”, or in this case “as it was” 200 years ago.
That year I had opted for Michigan’s early turkey season. Even though my home state of Michigan is rated seventh for the number of turkeys taken each spring, the early season is a gamble on the weather. To my dismay, a severe cold front arrived on opening day. High winds drove heavy rain, which turned to snow, through the bare tree branches for the next several days. Undaunted by the weather, I loaded each barrel with a square load of a 1 ¼ ounce measure of FFg GOEX black powder, 2 over pow-der card wads, a 1 ¼ ounce measure of #6 shot, and an over shot card. Opening morning I hunted from a pop-up blind and watched the ground in front of me slowly turn white with snow. Sometimes a gust of wind would collapse my blind. For the next few days I braved the winter-like weather. Calling and waiting in ambush along likely turkey travel routes wasn’t working.
Still, I enjoyed carrying my double flinter. Just holding
it in my hands and looking at it made me smile. I was pleased with it. It was a very personal thing with me because I knew the gun intimately inside and out. I had overcome the challenges of building it and I understood its limitations. I knew its favorite load and was familiar with the punch of its recoil. I just knew that if I did my part it would not fail me. All I needed was a chance at a wild turkey.
That opportunity came by surprise one afternoon when my teenage grandson stopped by the house. He had already taken a mature tom. As we talked about hunting, Chance pointed out the window and exclaimed, “There goes a turkey right there. It’s a big tom!” The bird was legging it across the field toward the woods. My turkey hunting gear was in my pickup truck, so we ran outside. Chance grabbed a box call from my pack and gave him a few loud yelps. To our surprise, the tom stopped and gob-bled, then stretched his neck up looking for the hen.
“He’s callable,” I said “When he goes into that woodlot we can run around to the other side and try for him.” As the gobbler slowly stalked into the woods we did a sort of Chinese fire drill grabbing camo jackets and caps. Then we ran around the woodlot.
“There’s a good spot to call from,” Chance pointed to a fallen tree with thick grape vines hanging in it. He hid behind the brush to call and I pulled on my head net and got situated in the front edge of the blowdown where we expected the turkey to approach. “Ready?” Chance whis-pered.
“Yep.” I answered softly as I primed both pans with FFFFg black powder.
Chance soon had the gobbler answering the soft yelps and clucks of what sounded to him like a love sick hen. I sat without moving and waited, elbows on knees, and the flintlock’s left hammer cocked. I figured the right hammer could be cocked quickly if a second shot was needed. I heard the soft pft-humm, pft-humm of the tom drumming before I could see him. Suddenly, the strutting gobbler came around a big maple tree into plain sight at 35 yards. For a modern shotgun it would have been all over right then, but I needed him closer.
That tom turkey was alertly looking for the hen that he just knew should be right in front of him, but he couldn’t locate it. In a half-strut, he moved several yards to my right. Now my gun was out of position. When the bird stepped behind a large tree I quickly shifted my aim. At 30 yards he froze and stretched his neck up, still searching for a hen. Chance waited for him to start moving again before giving him one final cluck from the slate. The tom froze again. He was now too close to risk any more calling, yet still a little too far for a sure kill with my cylinder bore gun. Slowly, the big bird took a few careful steps closer before stretching up his neck again. Time seemed to stand still. The woods was completely silent. The gobbler’s head was cocked sideways and his piercing black eye seemed to be locked on me. I imagined that his small brain had just realized that something was terribly wrong. I touched off the left barrel. Ka- Boom! A cloud of smoke momentarily blocked my vision of the turkey but the sound of heavy wings thumping the ground reached my ears. I jumped up and ran to claim my prize.
I’ll always fondly remember the next few minutes as my grandson and I excitedly relived the successful hunt we had just shared. We admired the beautiful bird together. The sun lit up an iridescence in his feathers and the long, thick beard showed him to be a marvelous specimen of the Eastern wild turkey. He was the largest I’ve ever taken, lat-er pulling the scales down to the 25 pound mark. Then we looked at each other and burst out laughing. In our haste we had both slipped on camo jackets and caps but I was wearing blue jeans with white socks showing and Chance had on light colored sweat pants and was wearing mocca-sin-like house slippers. Quite the turkey hunters!
“Do you want to carry the turkey or the shotgun?” I asked. “Gun,” he grinned.
Hoisting the heavy bird over my shoulder, I followed my grandson through the spring woods. Maybe it was just my imagination but the young man seemed to be walking a little taller than I remembered. Proudly cradled in his arm was the flintlock double that I had been seeing in my mind for a long time.
There would be other hunts, but with that first turkey I felt that my goal of building and hunting with my own flintlock double barrel had finally been attained.
Money can’t buy the feeling of satisfaction and the thrill of taking game with a gun you have invested many hours of effort and care in building. There is nothing quite like hoisting a heavy gobbler over your shoulder, picking up your flintlock firearm, and starting home on a cool, spring morning with the rising sun lighting your way.
I can’t wait until the season opens next spring and it’s “turkey time” again.
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The NMLRA and Muzzle Blasts have been an authority on muzzleloading since 1933. This article was not sponsored or paid for, we feel it is our job to bring you the most up to date news as possible on the world of Muzzleloading, be it living history, competitive shooting, or hunting