16 gauge smoothbore shotgun loads for best chance at a decent 25 yrd turkey load

[sonny]

load work is done off hand or off bag?

[Joe S]

Bag.

[Mauser06]

I second the bag...Or atleast shooting sticks. Minimize human error to see what each load is doing without the monkey behind the trigger messing up the shot.


For patterning, I use "builders paper". I got it at Lowe's.  Just a heavy weight brown paper. Forget how wide my roll is...I'd guess it's somewhere around 3ft wide. "Waste" a lot of paper. But for reading patterns, it's size is useful...Bulk of your pattern might not be the exact point of aim. I like my pattern centered just a couple inches low for turkey.  I put my sights right below their head. The way I aim on a turkey and the way my pattern is set to hit, I put the most hits on them. No sense in sending half the pattern over their head. 


Though I'm shooting a choked gun and slightly different animal. 

[Daryl]

load work is done off hand or off bag?

Shooting offhand tests your accuracy.  The better, ie: more accurately the load shoots, the tighter will be your offhand grouping.  Work up a load, then shoot it offhand.

People who think "it doesn't matter, because I'm shooting offhand" usually are not competitive with those who know it matters.

The necessity for the 'best' accuracy is not important for many people & that is fine. Each to his/her own. 

However, if you want the best accuracy from your rifle or smoothbore, you must use a rest for load development.