Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting Fall Turkey, and rifles- your choice?

Once again drew my fall turkey permit here in Colorado. The past two years, have scored using my .22 Hornet and 45 gr. softpoints.
What is everyone else using, for calibers and bullets?

I use a Remington 5mm Magnum the most, then my Ruger 22 Hornet, using 45gr Barnes XLC (I have a lot of them), and, once in a while, a Sako in 222RemMag with reduced loads.

I'm thinking of using my Ruger Security Six in 357mag this fall.

My notion, as yet unfulfilled, is to use 46gr Speer HPs designed for the .218 in my Hornet at about 2000-2200. Have the bullets, just need the load. Only get a short season in this county, so I may have to branch out a bit if I want to give it a serious go.

Here in TN we have not got a rifle season. Never used one on a turkey so I am not sure how I feel about using one,

Rifles were allowed in Mississippi years back....took them years before they figured out people were shooting turkeys off the roads and outlawed their use.

Turkeys shot at long distance with a rifle is not considered turkey hunting by most all turkey hunters.

221 fireball with 50 grain. But no more, rifles now illegal for next fall here due to lower populations. Shotgun only in spring and now fall. Thing is, I doubt rifle hunters take that many to make much difference one way or the other.

No rifles for turkey here in Illinois, deer either. But I can go coyote hunting with anything I want! Lol!

I like my .222 or .22-250.. As the great hunter Davis said, because I hunt for sport and not meat, I use a rifle... For years I used only a rifle, then tried a shotgun.. Wow that is pure murder.. About as difficult as hitting aBud can on a fence post.... TRY calling in a bird and shooting it with a rifle!!!

The Pa. decision is crap.. Bowhunters and the Wild Turkey Fed. is behind that move.. Pa. caters to what ever these two want.. Glad my days there are over...

Yes sir, you are right!. I got a nice gobbler a couple of years ago with my 17 hornet.

took first bird with 22 hornet at about 140 yards. everybody gave me a bunch of poop, so the next year same rifle but snuck up to about 10 yards. that stoped the poop flow really quick. pre war mod. 70 by the way. D O M I T !

Rifles are legal in Virginia and I hunted turkeys exclusively with a Ruger mod 77 Ultralight in .223 Rem for several years but I found that for the terrain I hunt a shotgun is a much better turkey slayer so I have not hunted turkeys with a rifle for a couple decades now. If I were to take up a rifle for turkeys again it would likely be chambered in 22 Hornet.....Good hunting...Hb

The old-timey rounds like .32/20, .25/20, and even the original .22 Hornet are classic turkey cartridges, used at woods ranges, not for sniping at long range. Another good choice is a .36-.45 caliber roundball, fired from a classy ML, or an equivalent fired from a centerfire. Back in the day, such loads were commonly put together by one-gun hunters, and there were even some factory small-game loads for classic deer cartridges. Now, everyone has a special rifle for every conceivable use.

Old gunwriter Jim Carmichael wrote of calling turkeys in close and shooting them in the head or neck with “a cleverly concocted rifle cartridge”, certainly at least as sporting as greasing them with a double handful of birdshot at the same ranges. No one is openly advocating treating turkeys like big, feathered woodchucks, but slobs are going to do what they do regardless of the law. Doesn’t make sense to penalize everyone for what a few do.

Yep and there are a lot of unhappy PA turkey hunters who had no input.

PA is famous for stupid game laws and not giving a rat's a-hole for hunter input. That's how we got antler restrictions.

But for decades............... it was legal for me to use a .220 Swift, 7-STW or .460 Weatherby for fall birds. But NOT #2 lead shot in a shotgun.

I, personally, am a shotgun guy for turkeys through and through. But the one time I carried a rifle in the fall, I took a 5mm Remington Magnum out for about an hour. It was just a nostalgic whim.

I wish we could hunt them with rifles here. If given the chance, I'd carry a Marlin .25/20 or Marlin 62 .30 Carbine. Actually, I'd love to shoot one at shotgun range with my Great Grandad's old Hopkins & Allen .32 RF falling block. The bore is rough but I think I could manage a body shot at 30 yards.

I think a cool turkey rifle would be a classic lever action chambered in .44 Magnum, maybe a Henry Big Boy 👍......Hb

Well, depends on where you shoot them……head is certainly more difficult, but I had no issues calling them into certain shotgun range and putting a 22 rimfire in their head…..mostly with open sights…..but I was far younger, too.

Rifles used to be legal in AL, with open sights only. Texas didn’t seem to care. Plenty of folks used more gun and shot the top of the back, and saved the breast.

Only Turkey stories I recall reading by Davis were about him shooting turkeys out of trees with rifles.

He has abook called The American Wild Turkey.. Very hard to find and very costly and full of information on turkeys.. Much of what the old timers did has been cast in a negative light by the Wild Turkey Fed.. The old timers felt only a dirt bag would kill a gobbler during mating season.. But they were hunters.. Hunting turkey like other game.. Not using its weakest time to kill them and think they have done something great...