[fabsroman]

My advice would be to use the gun next turkey season after you have had the opportunity to work with in during the off season. Spend the rest of this week hunting for that second bird with the tried and true gun you have been using. I know, it is tough to not use the new gun, but I made a similar mistake after buying a new choke tube for waterfowl. I just assumed that it would pattern great, so I took it out for the first day of duck season. Couldn't understand how I was missing so much on the wood ducks and I could have sworn I had a mallard die in my sights.

The next day, a Sunday when I could not hunt, I patterned the new choke tube and found that it patterned terrible with #5 and #6 steel, but that it patterened beautifully with #4 Hevi Shot. So, that is what I started using. The next weekend, I killed a mallard drake dead as a stone as it and a hen came in real close. The hen did a circle and flew right back over us at about 50 yards up and I dropped her like a rock too.

If you don't have the time to spend patterning the gun this week, use the old one. It would truly suck to loose the first tom with the SBE because of the patterning.

By the way, the choke tube I was using is a Patternmaster. Haven't patterned it on larger shot, but it has been clobbering geese with BB, BBB and T shot, so I think it holds a pretty good pattern with the larger shot. I shot one goose last year at about 20 yards with T shot coming straight in and there was nearly a clear hole through the bird. The left side of the bird was completely ruined.