Turkeys and 22 rifles

I shot my Tom this spring with my crossbow. Broke a wing and took out the boiler room. It ran about forty yards and died. I have shot turkeys with a load of 5s and watch they fly away only to be found later with pellet holes in their neck...but no broken spine. Will a .22LR kill a Turkey? Sure it will. Poachers take deer with them all the time. Had a boss that used to hunt fall Turkeys in the Black Hills years ago with a .220 Swift. Claimed more than once he'd see a puff of feathers @ 150 yards and the bird would still get up and fly away. Turkeys can be tough when shot in the wrong place, regardless of what you use. Whatever it is you use, use it well.

The argument over whether or not rifles are ethical for turkeys has been around since we went from hunting them to survive to hunting them for sport. Some places the decision to use 'em is a personal thing, others the law has made that choice for us.
 
A turkey head shot with a bullet, has the chance of only shooting the turkey's beak off, thusly condemning the turkey to starvation.
 
second best, no need to regurgitate at all. i processed turkeys for a butcher. I've killed a few birds. I've even eaten enough turkeys to know how they are put together and what it will take to kill one.

The probable reason for your turkey to sit in the tree bleeding is that birds have tendons that lock the toes in place when they roost. It's an adaptation that keeps them from falling out of the trees when they sleep. It might have been dead from the moment it landed on the roost. I once shot a crow, then shot it again, and again, and it didn't fall off until almost nightfall.

It shouldn't surprise you that a bow that can punch through a deer would be able to punch through a turkey.
 
a turkey head is indeed a very small target, and trying to pop off a turkeys little tiny head with a rifle can really stretch the limits of hunter ethics.
 
If someone is going to shoot a turkey with a .22, they need to remember that the obvious target is not the kill zone. There is nothing vital in the breast area. All the turkey's vitals are on the back side and down lower than the breast.
 
Makes sense that a round that has killed many 150+ pound humans could kill a 20lb bird.

Then there is the story of Bella Twin who, it is alleged, killed a large grizzly with a .22 long (not long rifle).
 
I've killed about half a dozen with an old scoped Stevens 87 using Winchester Super X 36gr hp's, never lost one. Nailed a gobbler with an open sight 30-30 loaded with 170gr Silver Tip's at 70yds. Went through one breast and drug a handful of feathers through him and the other breast. Did no more harm than an arrow, very little blood shot meat and deader than with the 22.:confused: My cousins boy hit one in the same spot with a 55gr 223 fmj, totally ruined that bird. My brother-in-laws late Father, used an old, nice Winchester 62 pump to kill I don't know how many turkeys! No way you could have convinced him he was under gunned. My Dad's favorite was a Marlin 22mag, always did the job.
The base of the neck is a good spot to hit one.
 
^^^ +1000 to the anatomy chart.

Here in MT handguns are legal for Blue and Ruffed grouse. I don't hunt them much, and use a shotgun when I do, but I have killed more of them with a .40 cal pistol and fmj ammo than a shotgun. The ideal shot is to take the lungs from the side. On such a small bird the goal is anywhere above the (diagonal, face down) breast.

Now what does a bird that small have to do with a turkey? Simple: Anatomy. The same knowledge of anatomy that allows a .40 S&W or .44 SPL to kill a small bird without destroying the meat, is the same thing that allows a 36gr hollow point to be placed where it will neither destroy half of a breast, nor give us a wounded Turkey.

I am not a turkey hunter, but I have killed or seen killed or know people who have killed everything from gophers to fox, coyote, and even deer with a .22lr, including many turkeys and geese (I know, laws, but it was the 1930s and that's the way it was) . Only on deer were lung hits not immediately telling.
 
One of the important things about this discussion is how they affect humans. The .22 kills people. You can do brain shots, or multiple torso shots, and usually this is what kills people.

The crime reports also show a lot of people who die after being shot with pellet or .22 guns is because of eventual infection because the person didn't seem treatment for one reason or another. Usually that's because they are bad guys.

If you remember the donut shop cop shooting, the bg took a bullet to the shoulder, iirc, and his family took him in and hid him, when he was caught, he had been bandaged with duct tape.

Bad guys avoid medical treatment if possible, and sometimes they wind up dead long after taking a bullet, just like any other animal.
 
It's incomprehensible that a .22 long could have somehow killed a grizzly, even with a skull shot. Not immediately, at least.

One of the people I know worked as a cop in Alaska. His experience was that a huge number of people carried ar rifles in bear areas. Of course a 223 can kill a bear with a few shots in good areas. Someone who's skilled with a rifle could easily stop a bear charge.
 
^ On this...

About a week ago my brother and I slaughtered a cow. It had a skull no rimfire .22 was going to penetrate...but that skull had holes and weak spots. A 40gr standard velocity (1050fps) felled it like lightning.

So is it POSSIBLE to fell a Grizz with a .22 long? I would say with accurate placement on a stationary animal, yes, it is almost certainly possible. Is it a good idea? Of course not. If it happened, then the shooter in question almost certainly brained it.
 
I have absolutely no idea how to find it online, but there was a hammer made with three .22 lr rounds built in, it worked much like a ball pen. Bash the hammer against something hard, a round fired, and as the hammer was raised it rotated to the next round. The owner believed that it was used for cattle. He also thought that it may have been a courtroom gavel, for defense. (not what I think...)

When a .177 caliber pellet gun could bounce off of the skull of a typical small to medium game animal, It's hard to believe that a lightweight lead bullet at subsonic speeds could break through the tough as hell head of a grizzly bear and still manage to do sufficent brain damage to kill that thing. The story said that the thing dropped like it had been tazed. Let's be serious. I had a pretty big hole punched in my head and survived it, and thousands of other people have survived worse wounds than that and still been able to function.

As was said, "allegedly," there's no real confirmation that I could find, but it seems to be true.(if you assume that the tribe and the woman didn't lie.) In any case, sniping a grizzly at short range through just the exact space in the brain that would drop it with the equivalent of a hot .22 short is not the same thing that we're talking about-Whether a .22 passing through inconsequential tissues on a medium game animal will kill it. The discussion shouldn't be only about whether it can kill game animals if the stars are properly aligned, it should also be about whether it can do it when human factors are involved, and whether it is capable of doing the job if there just happens to be a twig in the way that sets the POI off a bit and it winds up with a hit in a low impact area.

A while back I read a story about hog hunting with an air rifle. The state in question did, in fact, allow hog hunting with air rifles, and it made absolutely no distinction about caliber, bullet weight, or veliocity. You could legally hunt hogs with a crossman. Hitting a hog with a 177 pellet might not even piss it off, and it would take nothing less than a miracle, IMO, to drop a hog with a hit from a pellet gun.
 
You are, I think, talking about a Greener's Humane Horse Killer, or some such similar item.

"Through the skull with a .22 Long"? No, almost certainly not, I agree with you there. Neither would it be so on the cow, but there are places where it could be done. Eye sockets and such. A good idea, heck no!

.....And of course the eskimo has a smaller .22 each time I hear the story. When I was a kid it was a .22 Hornet, and later a .218 Bee. .22lr has been more common in recent years, and now not just for one eskimo, no, it seems they were all doing it just as regular as clockwork. Now we have gotten to the .22 long, and even the .22 short! In just the past few years, the story has gone equal-sex, and now it was an eskimo woman...WOMEN (plural) in a few years I suppose. By the time my granddaughter hears tell of it, it will be the mighty warrior women of the North, who routinely slew the great bears with nothing but an icicle, teeth, and new determination!

That's not a poke at you personally briandg, just at the varied versions I have heard over the years. I have no doubt that there is a core element of truth to this old legend, but what really happened, when, where, and by whom....who knows?
 
The object I am talking about wasn't a greener killer, it was quite literally a wooden mallet that held a firing mechanism and three rounds. You just whacked whatever it was on the top of the head. He thought that it may have been used by a judge as a concealed weapon in session, in case a defendant or other person got frisky.

No, I see what you are talking about, let's not forget that she had a world record griz walk up and she had a gun. How likely is it that this is true? Very unlikely.If you see the photographs, my god, that thing is twice the size of a cowhide! I'm only accepting it as possibly true because I can't disprove it. Personally, I think that it's bunk. People lie. everyone has heard of hogzilla and his sudden shrinking while in the grave, and wasn't it killed by a little boy with a .44?

One of the things that they held out as proof of the story was they had the critter's skull with a bunch of little bullet holes in it. Well, nobody ever faked anything like that, right?
 
I do too. Very long time ago. I couldn't really figure out how it would work. I actually wonder if it was just a one-off made by a gunsmith.
 
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