Distance: The Working Comfort Zone -- Pt 1

From Turkey and Turkey Hunting
We all have a comfort zone for distance in bagging turkeys. I don't want to talk about ethics, but just personal comfort. It would be a question that would just hard to glean anything meaningful if I just asked you "What is your comfort zone?" Everyone has a different way of looking at it. So here is how I want to frame the question so that we can get some workable data. First off, think about all the turkeys you have shot and the distance they were shot. This is not just about kills, but about shots-- times in which you were confident enough to turn off the safety and let fly. There may be a couple that went a bit too far or that you thought were risky going in. We'll throw those out-- we're not discussing maximum range here. I know there are those of you who have 3.5" guns shooting Nitro's out to 70 yards, and you feel confident with them. That's a different question. This is something different. Take a look at the closest 80% of your shots. What was the distance? We'll call that "Working Comfort Zone."

Was it inside 20 yards? 30? 40? 50? 60?

I think 80% is a comfortable cut-off. If we apply that to my situation, I've got 1 bird in 28 years that I've taken right at 40 yards. Over 60% are inside 20 yards. I'd say the majority were even close-- more like 15 yards. There have been a few in the 30-35 range. The 80% cutoff would probably leave me at 30 yards. it may be closer-- more like 25 yards, but I'm just guessing.

. . . that's stupid. I did the actual calculation and ended up with 14 yards. Yikes! That's closer than I thought!!!


Remember, this has nothing to do with your longest shot or how far your shotgun is set up for. My current shotgun can do at least 50 yards. It can probably to more, but I don't even pattern at that distance.

I posed this question a bit differently a few seasons ago on another forum. What I found out was this: of all the guys who had confidence that their shotguns would pattern effectively out past 50 yards, the maximum distance that 80% of them had taken a shot at a turkey was 43 yards. They might have been already to dance out to 70, but the turkeys were only being cooperative out to a little more than 40. In my situation, I can regularly see turkeys out to 400+ yards on my farm. However, when I'm hunting on the ground from my field edges, the folds of the land knock that down to sometime less than 40 yards. I can stand up and see a hundred or more. If I get back into the cedars that distance goes down even further.

See what this means? For me this means that turkey hunters in general may be pursuing a range that is largely impractical. I am not saying heavier-than-lead loads are wrong or that extended choke tubes are wrong. I'm just saying that the guiding motivation may be all wrong in that the opportunities to take gobblers out past that Working Comfort Zone may be few and far between.

There are a few old farts on here that may be able to give me an amen on this, but I remember back to a time when a good trap gun made a good turkey gun. If you could throw lead out to 40 yards, you had a great gun. Nothing has really changed in all those years, certainly not the turkeys.

My motivation for this is not to be on a soapbox. However, I was working with SuperCore the other day--the guy who I'm outfitting for his first turkey hunt. We got into this discussion. You can pretty much see where I'm coming from on this topic. It got me to thinking. Do I have this wrong? Am I in the minority on this?

Here's how to do the calculation. Quickly jot down all the distances of all the shots you've made. You don't have to be really exact-- just guess. There may be ones you don't want to admit to-- even to yourself. That's okay. Write them all down just count them-- this isn't an average. Let's say you have 20 shots on birds in your lifetime so far. 80% of 20 is 16. Okay, that means knock off the longest 4 shots and give the longest range remaining. Let's try one:


20
10
25 -- longest #4
32 - longest #2
17
18
12
15
25 -- longest #4
51 -- longest #1
22
17
47 -- longest #3
14
6
15
22
21
18
20

20 total shots (count hits, misses-- everything!)

20X .8 = 16 -- That's 16 birds that were certainly in your comfort zone.

20-16 = 4 -- Count off the longest 4 shots. Look for the longest remaining. In this case, I just threw out random numbers, there were two shots at 25 yards. Knocking off one would give you the 80%. Saving the other as the longest remaining one gives you an answer of 25 yards of Working Comfort Zone. Roughly speaking, that means that 80% of the birds this guy flipped the safety on were at 25 yards or closer. That's longer than my numbers, but that is still a chip-shot for even a 2.75" 12 GA shooting normal high-brass pheasant loads out of a modified choke. Heck, you could probably use a low brass squirrel load and get away with it.

Try it and see what number this gives you. My guess is that the number folks get as their Working Comfort Zone is much shorter than what they have their turkey guns set up to do. The next question is: Do we really need to be setting up our guns for these longer distances? What is the Practical Working Limit?