Here's my opinion; the short 10's such as an Ithaca Super 10 made for high velocity loads with 1-5/8 ounce of lead shot will absolutely flatten a large turkey or predator such as a fox at 60 yards = my personal max based on actual patterning. That's with heavy choking at 45 points or even a touch more and using hard lead 4's (max for turkeys here in PA) or with 2's for foxes and BB's for coyotes. Same for waterfowl using real NICE shot (not bismuth) or with Kent TM that's been mined from Kent factory shells. Sure everyone wants as close a humane shot as possible but if a bird is wounded that second shot is taken at whatever the range happens to be. Now I'm not talking here about light short 10 loads with 1-1/8 or even 1-1/4 ounce of lead, or worse yet, with bismuth for waterfowl. Funny, just yesterday there was a discussion over breakfast on the way to our sporting club, about the merits of the modern practice of shooting fine shot at turkeys and going for the head. The concensus by several long time hunters is, that works well when the bird is called in relatively close, but also that the old timers knew what they were doing by shooting 2's as generally recommended by the period ammo companies for the large birds. Again, 4's are the max allowed for turkeys nowadays here in PA. Our spring season opened on Saturday and two of the buds were showing off cell pics of good gobblers taken the day before with 3-inch 12's and regular 4-shot. Not some modern fad turkey load with a cool sounding name. At least some of the guys are keeping the faith .....
