Distance: The Working Comfort Zone — Pt 2

From Turkey & Turkey Hunting

flatrock9:

I often wonder why I spend money on choke tubes and high dollar shells that are designed to be shot at extended ranges. I have decided this year that I am gonna get outside my comfort range some. I feel comfortable with what my gun can do out to 50-60 yards. If the opportunity presents itself and I can’t get him in my comfort range, I will try a 40-50 yard shot.

See, that’s what I’m wondering too. My point in all this is we keep expecting them to show up at 50 yards, and really the gobs are running in much closer. On the one hand, we spend all Winter stewing over those long shots, we get ever-more-expensive ammo to shoot out of ever-tighter chokes and then the darn things pop their heads up at 5 yards and we hit ’em in the head with the wad– or worse yet, shoot over their heads.

What first really cued me to all this was back when Nitro first starting making a splash. I got into it online with a well-known mfg’s pro-staffer over the need for 70-yard-capable ammo. My point wasn’t that it was unethical, just impractical. If I showed up with $7/round ammo the turkeys would laugh at me. The pro-staffer was all over me– I got a good flogging for that one. He even called me an Old-Schooler– first time I heard that epithet (That was before I came here.)

You know what? A few months later, there he was showing off his gobblers and they were all taken within a normal pedestrian range. I forget the exact numbers, but I think it was inside 25 yards or such. I didn’t say anything.

My personal feeling is that there is no great difference in the sport if you bag one at 25, 50, or 75 yards. I know some of you all think differently. The point here is to ask if it’s just me or are the turkeys not being fully cooperative in all these extended-range heavier-than-lead baseballs-at-50-yard plans?

Last weekend I was down at the farm, doing a little bit of scouting. I’ve got a series of rough blinds set up down a fence row, about every 50-75 yards. It wasn’t planned that way, but that’s how it’s come about. The turkeys never seem to cooperate when it comes to being at the right place at the right time. I go hide with my back to Tree X, and they show up in the field 10 yards from Tree Y. I pile some cedar boughs up by Tree Y and they congregate next to Stump Pile Z. Once in a blue moon, I get it right. It hadn’t dawned on me until last weekend that I have this near-continuous string of blinds stretching a quarter mile now.

Anyhow, I visited all the blinds last weekend, and looked to see if they needed any work. I got into each blind and sat and then I got out into the kill zone and looked in. Here’s my point: standing up in each of these blinds I could see waaaay out across the pastures. Sitting down, I had a horizon line sometimes no more than 25 yards. I forget over the Winter how folded the land is out there. I think pasture=flat. Nope. These are pastures that were cleared by hand by pioneers. Nobody brought in a bulldozer or a grader. Then I got out and looked from the turkey’s point of view. Even kneeling doesn’t cut it. It’s down on all fours. When you get down there, the view to the blind has pretty good concealment all the way to sometimes 10-15 yards. Now remember, this is cleared pasture and food plots. I’m not in the woods yet.

More later, y’all.

For those of you who haven’t, grab an envelope and try the exercise for real. You can see, as I was writing it, I surprised myself how close that Working Comfort Zone really is.

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