That, my friends, is a 300 Blackout SBR. It’s photographed behind the morbidly deceased Rio Grande jake because, once again, I took a Texas turkey with this gun. No more shotguns for turkeys, y’all.
This year I was in a deer blind. Thanks to the range and capability of 300 Blackout — even subsonic, even from a short gun — I was able to hedge my bets. The decoy was straight ahead, 100 yards away by the feeder. I had line-of-sight down a narrow clearing to my right for maybe 200 yards. To my left, I could sight down a dirt road with about 50 yards of visibility before it turned left into the trees. Behind me was a dry riverbed with a sparsely-foliaged field beyond it.
I can call in all directions, I can shoot in all directions. I’m not at all limited to ~50 yards as a realistic maximum as I would be with a shotgun. In fact, I’m sighted in at 100 and I know my holds for shorter and longer.
Not only do I have an optic, I have a 1-4x adjustable magnification prism from ZeroTech. A great optic with incredible glass, an etched reticle with elevation holds, and both green and red illumination (I usually just run prisms turned off). The photo above was taken at 1x (zero) magnification early in the A.M. before the sun broke the horizon.
If you’re in the market, coupon code SNW20 works for 20% off on the ZeroTech site!
With this one tiny little rifle I’m not even limited to just turkey. Heck, I’m not even limited to needing daylight. I slapped my SIG ECHO CV25 clip-on thermal optic in front of the ZeroTech the night before and went after hogs. I ended up taking a jackrabbit instead, then, on my way to the hunting blind an hour before daybreak the next morning, I shot the bunny above thanks to the ability to instantly pop the thermal optic in front of the daytime optic.
Hogs, coyotes, javelina, bobcat, axis deer, red deer, and more were on the approved target list. But not with a 12 gauge. In fact, I’ve taken an axis with this very rifle. For the record, it’s a Palmetto State JAKL pistol turned SBR with the addition of a Black Collar Arms folding Carbine Stock.
It’s pretty handy to carry one gun while [ostensibly] turkey hunting, but without limiting myself should a different target of four-legged opportunity arise.
That said, because wild turkey are my primary focus I’m loaded up with inexpensive, non-expanding ammo. Black Collar Munitions nice-and-affordable 220 grain copper plated subsonic loads, in this case. But I also have a 20-round mag of Hornady Sub-X in case something large and tasty shows itself.
This was my first turkey taken with a rifle. It was two days before Thanksgiving in 2024 and I wasn’t hunting turkey. I was walking around on a ranch with this rifle in my hands, and the big, dumb birds just popped out of the trees about 60 yards in front of me! They surprised me, I surprised them, I remembered that Texas law allows for hunting turkey in all sorts of different manners including with all sorts of different rifles, and I shot my shot.
This hen was facing me and I put the shot square in her sternum. She dropped right there and didn’t so much as twitch.
Directly through the heart. Zero meat damage. That .308-inch diameter, copper plated projectile traveling about 1,000 FPS made a nice, neat, clean little hole through the bird. Heck, it hardly damaged the heart muscle and it passed right through the thing.
This was decidedly not my experience with the previous turkey hunt, in which I — like nearly everyone else always has — used a 12 gauge. I hit that big ol’ tom low in the neck and there were plenty of BBs in my turkey meat. No me gusta.
Elevated in a deer blind, the shot on my jake a couple of weeks ago was made from a totally different angle. The turkey was quartered away from me and I was shooting down at it from about 35 yards away. The bullet entered next to the spine between the wings and exited under the wishbone on its chest.
It just caught the end of one of the breasts and put a tiny little hole through it with some blood around the hole. Were this through the middle of the breast, it really wouldn’t have done any meat damage. I basically just cleaned the blood off and didn’t see any reason to remove meat. A fully copper plated projectile, in most cases, also means no lead exposure.
Scroll up a bit and check out that photo of the rabbit. I tagged it square in the shoulder with one of these same rounds. It dropped right where it was, but the damage to the bunny was indistinguishable from what an ice pick would do.
Meat in the freezer!
Did I mention I spent two days hunting and never once wore ear protection? Most subsonic 300 Blackouts are nice and quiet, and equipping mine with a Precision Armament TiTrex, it simply doesn’t get quieter.
There’s nothing like being able to hear hogs snorting deep in the brush and hearing those turkeys from far away. Hearing little animals scurry around. All without worrying about hearing damage or throwing on ear pro really quick when it’s time to shoot.
On this same trip, Jon Wayne Taylor took a coyote with his little 300 BLK T/C pistol. We did a quick suppressor shootout in the video above. I’m tellin’ you, the TiTrex cans are really darn quiet.
Subsonic 300 Blackout isn’t much of a round as centerfire rifle cartridges go, but it’ll darn sure anchor a turkey right where it stands.
Just a jake…nothing to write home about as nabbing an impressive turkey goes. Lots of meat, though!
Turkey in the truck!
Moral of the story: four of us went turkey hunting, three of us brought shotguns, but only one of us bagged a bird. Okay maybe that wasn’t due to the firearm choice, but with a magnified optic and the ability to accurately put a hole where it’s needed at beyond 100 yards, I was feeling pretty darn confident.
It was my recollection that, among rifles, only centerfire rifles were allowed for turkey hunting in Texas. I was either mistaken or the rules were relaxed. Regardless, rimfire is also legal. Next time I’m shooting 22 LR with this ammo.
As quiet as suppressed 300 Blackout is, it still spooks the rest of the flock. With a suppressed 22, I don’t think that would be the case. The daily bag limit here is two birds and next time I’m going for the twofer.
No shotguns. I’m a rifle guy for turkey. Make sure you check your state and county laws before converting, too.