Making Sense of the .410 Turkey Craze (VIDEO)

By Kristin Alberts

Given innovations in ammo, baby bore shotguns once relegated to small game have now become a viable turkey hunting option. The trend of getting after turkeys with the once underwhelming .410 is on a meteoric upswing. Hunters used to assume it took a 12-gauge—or bigger—to clean harvest turkeys. The times they are a-changin’. Companies like Federal Premium, Mossberg and Savage Arms just put the gobblers on notice with modern innovations. Naysayers will always claim .410 “too small” to humanely kill tough, trophy sized toms, but in this case, the proof can be found both on the patterning board and in the field.
Specialty Ammunition Sets the Stage
The major limiting factor for the .410 shotgun has been its slimline, small-capacity hull and the subsequent inability to pack large amounts of lead shot. With tungsten variants all the rage, it turns out less really is more.
Federal Premium has been leading the charge on the .410 turkey market. The name of the game here is small pellets with big performance. Heavyweight Tungsten Super Shot, or TSS, is a tungsten alloy superior in both density and performance to standard tungsten.
For comparison, even regular tungsten is far better than lead. TSS is a 3-inch .410 load with a

Source: Guns.com