Desperado Blackpowder 12GA Pistol: Texas Turkey Hunt
I’ve hunted deer for a few decades and have seen my share of turkeys while in the field. However, I have never been successful in hunting a turkey. This year I decided that was going to change with help from the Desperado. We have hunted deer, alligators, and hogs with American Gun Craft’s 12GA hand cannons, and on each of those successful hunts, we used slugs. For turkeys, we changed it up and used pellets instead. How did it go? Read on to find out.
Desperado Overview
The Desperado we used weighs in at four pounds with the two 8-inch smooth-bore barrels. It is a black powder muzzle loader that can fire a variety of loads. Like its little brother the Diablo, the Desperado has a hammer with a half-cock notch, a manual barrel selector, and a pair of latches to unlock the shotgun.
The longer sight radius and barrels give the Desperado a bump in accuracy, especially when shooting single ball or slug loads. The full-size rubber grips help handle the felt recoil and make the pistol easier to use in general. It has a straight mid-rib with a simple brass bead front sight. For those of you not familiar with the American Gun Craft Desperado, we did a complete review a few months ago.
Load for the Hunt
Since we are in the middle of a major ammo crunch, we had to get creative with a turkey load for the Desperado. Typically, we would use a muzzleloader shotgun shot wad with a cork overshot wad to keep all the pellets together for a better pattern. However, those were not available from any manufacturer in time for hunting season. So, a trip to the range was in order to figure out how to make it work.
The workaround was to use regular 12GA shotgun shell wads. These held about 1 oz of our #5 copper-plated lead shot. For reference, there are about 172 pellets per ounce. Most turkey loads on the market are over 1 ounce, so we added another half-an-ounce with an overshot card to keep everything in place.
I experimented with different charges, but 70 grains of FFFG seemed to give the best results at 20 yards. Since there is not a choke in the Desperado, the pattern was fairly wide at this range. However, I was consistently able to hit the target and get several pellets into the turkey target. All of this just confirmed what I already knew, and that is, I have to get really close to the turkey.
The Hunt
Turkey season in Texas for the south zone, where we were hunting, runs from March 20 – May 2. There has been a lot of rain this year and some very cold days, so we could not start hunting until the first week of April.
Knowing that I would have to be close to the turkey limited my options on how to hunt. Three options were proposed: First, set up a makeshift blind in the bushes near a spot that turkeys were known to frequent. The second was to stalk the turkey using a MOJO Scoot-N-Shoot decoy. The third was to use a ghillie suit and sit or lay close to the decoys to have a shot.
The ranch that we were on is 6,000 acres, and if you don’t know where the turkeys are, you will spend a lot of time scouting. Luckily for us, the ranch manager knew a spot where turkeys were coming off the roost and had some nearby bushes for the camera operator and me to hide in.
We sat for two days in the blind and had a few turkeys come up to us, but they were either jakes or hens. There were a few toms that come close but wouldn’t close the distance. We were using the Avian-X decoys, and they seemed to interest the turkeys; however, we got the same results without the decoys, too.
After not having much luck with the blind, we decided to try stalking the turkeys using the MOJO. This led us to see many more turkeys and learning their patterns of behavior. It was also very tiring making the calls and then moving to the turkey. We stalked several, and they just would not come close enough.
Finally, we resorted to simply sitting under a group of trees closer to the turkeys’ path. This was working great, and we had turkeys moving right toward us until some other hunters came down the road and scared them off.
We continued to go hunting 3-4 days a week until the end of the season. In the last week, with only a few days left, I was finally successful. How did I do it? Well, you need to watch the video to see the action.
How to Hunt Turkey
I feel compelled to spend some time talking about how to hunt turkey and what I learned. First, using the Desperado made me a better hunter. It forced me to go out every week until I was successful. I read a ton of articles and watch hours of videos on tips and tricks for hunting turkey, and this is what I learned:
- Don’t overcall. Let the turkey come to you.
- Call as soon as the turkey answers. Don’t keep them waiting.
- When a turkey gobbles back at you, move to where they are.
- Sit still. The turkey will come to you.
- Call every 30 minutes.
- Call every 5 minutes.
- Use hen calls.
- Don’t use clucks. They scare the turkeys away.
- Use clucks. They get turkeys interested.
The list goes on and on, and yes, each piece of advice seems to contradict the other. The one thing I know for sure about how to be successful at turkey hunting is this:
Know where the turkeys travel and be in their path. If you do not know where they are, then your odds of being successful are incredibly low.
Jeremy Mallette is co-founder of International Sportsman. An avid hunter and outdoorsman, he has spent more than a decade in the outdoor industry, from hiking and camping to silencers and hunting. His father taught him to shoot at age six, and he received his first firearm at age eight — a 1942 Colt Commando .38 special revolver. He enjoys yearly trips to Kansas for pheasant hunting, spending time with his children at the deer lease, and collecting unique firearms.
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