Despite the nearuniversal disdain from gunwriters, I’ve always liked the .410. I’ve always viewed it as a nice, light, easy-to-carry piece for use on small birds at short range. Of course, I grew up in a time and place where bobwhite quail was “the king of game birds.” And if it worked for bobs, it had to be OK. It did. And it was.
In those days, we hunted for ourselves with pointing dogs. We hadn’t even conceived of hunting guides or flushing dogs. We did our own flushing. Moreover, the birds didn’t suffer the intense pressure that they do now. As a result, most birds flushed close and flew pretty much straight-away. It was a rare occurrence when we killed a bird at more than 18 or 20 yards, and the .410 worked fine for that and still does.
I was introduced to quail shooting with 12 bores, because that’s what I had. On the other hand, a fair number of the kids my age had .410s, so I had plenty of exposure to the tiny gun. I also spent many an afternoon watching one of my “heroes” who used nothing but .410s on doves and quail. On doves, he used his “matched pair” of Winchester Model 42s with a small boy for a loader. When Mr. Bailey got “wound up,” he put on quite an exhibition.
When I grew up, I managed to acquire a couple of Model 42s of my own and made a fair accounting for myself with them. Later in life, one of my most prized possessions was a gorgeous, tiny Bertuzzi .410 hammer double that I carried all over the world whenever it was the appropriate tool for the job at hand.
As a result, I’ve always had a healthy respect for the .410 as long as it was restricted to small birds at short range.
Despite my experience with the .410 bore, nothing prepared me for what has recently happened to the modest little .410. In short, tungsten happened to the .410. And it has revolutionized the role of the .410 shotgun. That doesn’t imply that the effect of tungsten is limited to the little gun, because it has done the same for all the larger gauge guns as well.
Over the years, we’ve learned that many things affect the way that shotguns throw their patterns. Perhaps the biggest factor is the shot itself. Dense, hard, consistent shot simply patterns better. Tungsten is nothing if not dense and hard. It can be formed into beautiful, round shot of wonderful consistency. That means that when it’s used in a shotgun shell, it throws beautiful consistent, round patterns that are nearly free of the holes and inconsistencies produced by lead shot. Because the individual pellets are so consistently spherical, they tend to be less affected by atmosphere that they fly through and can produce patterns that are so tight that they’re hard to believe.
Stick with me, here, and maybe it’ll make more sense shortly. Because tungsten’s so dense, it’s also heavier for volume than lead or steel, or almost anything else, for that matter. Tungsten Super Shot weighs 18.1 grams per cc. For comparison, lead scales about 11.7 grams per cc, depending on the alloy. That means a couple of things. First, you can get more weight of tungsten into a given space than lead. Secondly, if you’re talking about shot pellets, you have the option of making the shot size smaller, and the number of shot within that space will go up dramatically. That means that for any given space, you can get many more pellets into the shotshell. And you won’t give up a thing in striking energy because the smaller shot weighs just as much as the larger lead shot that it replaced. Simple, huh?
Well, let me try it another way. A No. 9 tungsten pellet weighs roughly the same as a No. 5 lead pellet. If they’re both travelling at the same velocity, they’ll have roughly the same energy when they impact the target. They’ll behave a little differently, because they’re of different diameters, and the lead will likely deform on impact while the tungsten likely won’t. But they’ll carry roughly the same energy.
Here’s the kicker, though! You can get a lot more of the little No. 9 shot into the diminutive .410 shell! By rough calculation, the 13/16 oz. load of No. 9s in a 3-inch .410 shell will carry about 290 pellets. A 1 1/2 oz. load of No. 5 lead shot in a standard 12 gauge will count around 253. And because they’re denser, harder and more consistent, the 9s will pattern far better than any lead-shot shell ever could. And they’ll hit just as hard as the lead No. 5s. Trust me on this—you won’t believe the patterns that a .410 will throw with tungsten loads. Or the distance that it will kill.
Which brings me to the broader subject of this month’s evaluation. About a week ago, my FFL holder called and said that I had a package to pick up. I jumped into the Tundra and ran up there to pick it up and came home with a cute little Mossberg 500 pump-action in the .410 chambering. It’s awfully short with its 20-inch barrel and, at 5 3/4 pounds, it’s as light as a willow switch. It’s so slender that, in the woods, it carries like a Winchester Model 94, only lighter. It has a hard, durable camouflage finish and wears a tiny little Holosun reflex sight. It’s furnished with a single XF extended choke tube. I damn near laughed out loud when I read the “turkey gun” description, but you can bet that I’m not laughing now!
A couple of days later, my mail person delivered a supply of Fiocchi Golden Turkey Tungsten Super Shot shells. These little 3-inch beauties hold 13/16 oz. of tungsten No. 9 shot and, after some serious range testing, I can testify that they’re “big medicine!” At normal turkey hunting ranges of 35 to 40 yards, the combination of the little Mossberg and the Fiocchi tungsten shells will consistently put 12 to 15 pellets in the “boney part” of a turkey head target. With an impact speed and energy equal to a No. 5 lead shot, they’ll definitely do the job. Will the combo kill farther? You can speculate if you want to, but I genuinely don’t know and don’t care. The essence of turkey hunting is intimacy on swampy ground on a bright spring morning. I’ve killed a lot of the big birds in my time, and I want to call one in as close as I can and look him in his beady little bird eye before I lower the boom.
As for the gun? It’s a Mossberg 500! It has all the characteristics of its forbears, which is to say reliability, durability and extreme functionality at a reasonable price. To my notion, that equates to a near-perfect turkey gun. Additionally, this one is about as handy as a long gun can be and gives up nothing in effectiveness. I generally don’t care for optics on shotguns but, in this case, the Holosun is a necessity to prevent misses at close range. The combo patterns so tightly that a close-range miss would be a realistic possibility. My gimpy old legs won’t permit me to hunt turkeys as much as I used to, but this gun ain’t going back. It’s just too good, and you can bet that the next time I set out to match wits with a big old gobbler, I’ll be totin’ the little Mossberg 500 turkey gun.