Home Forums Birds & Dogs Turkey Hunting TSS facts verses fiction

That was a matter of speach....the guy at Apex pm'd me and offered to load me some bigger shot but I declined.

1] Maybe you have heard the comparison many times because it is appropriate and illustrative. Same size objects? Hit me with the lighter (less dense). Same weight objects? Hit me with the larger (less dense). EVERY TIME.

Nobody shoots icepick-shaped projectiles anyway.

2] I am an upland hunter, primarily. Lots of pheasant and quail. My state mandates non-toxic for all hunting, so I had to leave my tried-and-true longtime lead loads behind for in-state hunting. Thus my foray into TSS and duplex loads.

3] "A turkey is harder to kill than a duck.”. Perfect. Now keep that mindset for the following.

#4 TSS shot is orders of magnitude more lethal than #4 lead shot. Cut and dried. Head-to-head, lead and TSS simply do not compare in terms of lethality.

That is why we compare widely different shot sizes for the same applications, because the difference in lethality is so stark head-to-head, that it opens up options.

In fact, there is SO much latitude here, that you can draw the line wherever YOU want. Don't like 7.5 TSS because they are "too small, or yada yada?" Fine. Try 7's. Or 6's. Or 5's. Find your sweet spot. But be clear, at virtually no point can you design a load with lead shot that cannot be significantly and most often dramatically improved upon with TSS. And yes, often in a smaller gauge.

I know, but only now did you bring that up. What, you were saving it?

Just like your anonymous acquaintances who won’t go on the internet..not a one of them. Only you are brave enough to stand up to the TSS internet bullies.

“I know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows the real truth. However he won’t come out and say….”

Don’t quit know, keep it coming, what you lack in fact you make up in humor and BS..😂

Monty Python is going through my head. "Is this going to be a 2 minute argument, or a 5 minute argument"! (In my best British accent. Lol!)

Since using TSS for the first time last year, I'm sold on it. Look at all the charts and tables you want, whatever, and then use it. If there were only 10 and 12 gauge shotguns, maybe not, but TSS has incredibly upped the game using sub-bores. And if you don't want to use it, don't. But don't discount the merits of something you've never used.

I dunno. I just got done putting 10 rounds of 3.5" 00 buck and 10 rounds of 3.5" #5 through two of my guns a few days ago. At 15 rounds I was hurting so bad I had to force myself to pattern the last 5. I'm nursing a visible six inch butt pad shaped bruise on my shoulder right now. A sub-guage is sounding pretty damned good right about now.

Seriously, though. 2 oz turkey loads are about the heaviest recoiling shotshells one can fire. (My 10 gauge didn't kick like my 12 g 3.5 inchers.) A gun firing an effective load that doesn't crush one's shoulder has a helluva lot of merit.

Listen, TSS shot is not new. It's proven. Arguing its effectiveness at this point just seems silly. It works. My main problems is cost: TSS shotshells are immenely expensive. Up to $10 a shot and over. But that aside, they do work, and very well. But spending $50 to $100 to properly pattern a single gun with 5 to 10 rounds of TSS is a little off-putting.
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So, a question about chokes: what constrictions are TSS shooters using? Just the same chokes you were using for lead? Most choke makers recommend a tighter constriction as shot size gets smaller and #9 is pretty small, but it would seem that TSS might impose the same cautions of tight chokes that steel does. I don't know because I've only ever shot lead.

I shoot a little more open choke with TSS. I don’t go tighter with constriction. When I started playing with TSS in a 20 gauge, I assumed something close to .555 was perfect. It wasn’t….now I’m shooting .575 mostly. I still have a .562 that patterns great, but I just like what I see from the .575 for normal turkey ranges.

I'm shooting a .680 in my A5. It's a little more open, optimized for 3.5" #5.

I think Browning and Winchester’s prefer a choke with a more open constriction anyway. That 680 should be perfect!

I’ve done a bunch of patterning with several chokes in 2 different guns with shells from virtually all the TSS manufacturers. (All 20ga). I’ve not found any discernible trend. For better or worse you just need to shoot some different combinations to see what works best in your gun. And don’t forget to try the factory full choke

The good news is that getting 250+ hits in a 10” circle at 40 yards is relatively easy. At that point the question become how much denser do you want your patterns to be and what does that mean at 15 yards? My best combination puts 365 in the 10” at a lasered 40 yards. I’m planning to shoot it at 15 and 60 yards to see what it looks like before hunting it. Fwiw I don’t shoot past 45-50 yards

I’ve had great success in terms of the effectiveness of TSS but don’t try shots I wouldn’t have tried when I shot a 12 with LBs. I do find some pellets when dressing them but not as many as with lead. I’ve found a couple in cooked meat but fortunately haven’t chomped down on one yet

PS - the 20ga is a dream to carry. And with TSS is infinitely more effective than even the best patterning 12s with lead

I can tell you, I have shot barn roofing tin at 40 yards with both lead #6 and TSS #9 shot. The lead #6 poked about 3 holes in the tin and dented it. The TSS #9 poked about 50 or 60 holes in it and made much bigger dents.
The fact remains that 1) you have way more hits per square inch with #9 TSS than you do with lead #4, 5 or 6 shot, and you can do this with less oz. of shot.
I pattern my guns and know what I can do and what the pattern looks like at 50 yards. Do I shoot birds that far, no I don't, I do not shoot a bird any further out than I would with any other type of shell. I like them in around 20 yards or so if I had to pick a yardage to shoot them at.
Why do I shoot TSS, because of 2 reasons, 1) IT WORKS very well and with more hits per square inch than lead (due to the pellet count) it gives super clean quick kills. You do not have to jump up and run stand on the birds head like you do with lead or some other less effective shot type. 2) I can reduce the shot load which reduces recoil. This is kind of a big deal to me as I have had 2 shoulder surgeries and don't want a 3rd one.

LFC, you have brought this subject up before and beat this horse. You have been told the truth about TSS and yet you still stir the pot about it not killing birds. So be it, that is your right but at the same time you admitted before that you have never shot TSS. You sure seem to know a lot about what it will and will not do for someone that has never even shot it. All I can say about your buddies that will not come on the innerweb and have had to shoot birds 2 or more times with TSS and still had them run off, they did not shoot them where they should have. Maybe they did not pattern their gun or yanked the trigger or ?

After calling in a bird for my friend that I hunt with on his farm and watching him miss a big tom at less than 25 yards 3 shots with lead shells, I made him pattern his gun, it shot way off and he no longer hunts with that gun. He would have missed that bird with whatever shell he had been using.

Okay, forgive me, I've never really studied TSS shot since my Winchester rounds have always worked well for me. But I'm intrigued now, and intrigue tends to make me spend money. So I'm interested in the following:

So, for a given shell, in my case, a 3" or 3.5" 12g shell loaded with #5 lead shot. The same shell loaded with #7 or #9 TSS will have significantly more pellets - a no-brainer. That's an advantage if penetration is at least the same, and if at least the same percentage of the shotload hits the target, which both appear to be the case. But since I've found my lead loads perfectly adequate for turkeys, I'm less interested in the amount of shot hitting the target, than the potential recoil reduction by moving down a gauge.

There must be a point where a 20 gauge 3" TSS shell is putting at least as many pellets on target as a 12 gauge 3" lead shell loaded with #5. In other words, there must be a smaller gauge TSS equivalet to a larger gauge lead round. If I can get as many pellets of #7 TSS out of a 20 gauge on target as I can with a 12 gauge 3 or 3.5" lead round, with a corresponding reduction in recoil (and a lower price 20 g TSS shell versus a 12 g TSS shgell), then both the economics, performance and comfort become more attractive.

That's what I find intriguing about TSS. Getting my current 12g lead performance out of a 20g. Where's the point of equivallency?

10Glocks
I went from a 12 ga to a 20 ga. I was shooting 1 7/8 oz lead shells out of the 12 ga and using #5 shot. I went to a 20 ga. and went down to a 1 1/2 oz TSS shell. I have been loading and shooting TSS for a long time. Back when I started loading, that was the only way to get TSS shells was to load your own. Recoil is less, hits in the "magic 10" circle at 40 yards" have almost tripled and birds are dead right there.
Any type of shot (lead, Hevi, Heavy Weight, etc.) will kill a bird, no question. I want to do it as quickly as humanely as possible. In my mind the more hits I can have in the brain and neck is the way to do that.

You know what they say about opinions....

The magic 10" circle.....


For years I was a 10" circle pellet counter....

Then one day I just woke up from this long nightmare of drawing circles and counting pellet holes in paper and figured am I not smart enough on my own to just look at a target and know it will kill a turkey.

Now I refer to them as circle jerkers and I'm free at last...

Oh the irony...

Rick take a #4 pellet in one hand and a #9 TSs in the other.

Open both hands and tell me if you see a golf ball in one hand and a ping pong ball in the other ?

Density becomes you....odd that you don't get the TSS correlation.

Then again, trolls are trolls and as long as they are trolling life is fine... In your case you chum a little also...A chumming trol....:D

There are ways around recoil....

I been using a P.a.s.t. recoil sheild for years shooting high powdered rifles on a bench rest.

With a big gun if you dont have a P.a.s.t. I have draped my Boyt gun case over my shoulder.

In a hunting situation you never feel the recoil.....I like getting the chit kicked out of me.

So now you call me a troll because I dont agree with you ?