Black Powder Turkey Hunt

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Black Powder Turkey Hunt with Tony Knight

by Dave Freeman

When you call the number that reaches the Knight rifle Company in Centerville, Iowa, the recorded voice of Tony Knight, founder of the Knight Rifle Company, answers the phone. He welcomes you to Knight and makes the statement that he might see you in the woods someday. Little did I know when I called Knight Rifle in February of this year, that on April 29th I would be sitting beside the 55 year old inventor of the in-line muzzleloader in a northern Missouri woods. Looking down the barrel of the Knight muzzleloader shotgun and watching an eleven-inch gobbler in full strut approach our decoy. But, when I spoke with Tony, he invited me to Missouri to try out his shotgun on Missouri Toms. The opportunity to turkey hunt with the man who revolutionized the black powder industry was certainly an opportunity that I was going to take advantage of!

The first part of our adventure began when Tony sent me one of his TK 2000 muzzle-loader shotguns for me to try out. Knight Rifle recommends 120 grains of powder and a full two ounces of shot. Their statistics indicate with that load at 25 yards 330 pellets will strike a 30 inch diameter target or 97%. At 30 yards 328 pellets or 96% and at 40 yards 289 or 85. When Ohio Valley Outdoors staff member John Klear, and myself went to the range to test this theory, we were more than pleased with the results.

The shotgun exhibited less the expected recoil and the most exceptional shot patterns that I have ever seen for a black powder shotgun.

The advanced jug-choke tube design in the TK2000 will not only give the density that the company claims, but all so allows you to load the gun with the choke still in the barrel. Some statics in the TK2000 shotgun: It is a 12 gauge black powder shotgun with a 28 inch barrel, the overall length is 45 inches. Weighs only 7 pounds 9 ounces. It features fully adjustable fiber optic sights, and comes in black or camo.

After having the opportunity to try Tony's gun, I traveled to Missouri to hunt with him. In the state of Missouri, during the first week of Turkey season, you are only allowed one turkey. You are allowed two for the season, but you are only allowed to harvest one the first week. During the second week, you are allowed to harvest two birds, but again only two for the season. That was the reasoning for my being invited the second week.

I linked up with Tony near Centerville, Iowa, where he lives. We then traveled another hour to the south to his hunting camp in Missouri. Tony's family has owned this property for years. This also is where Tony worked after being laid off from a railroad after seventeen years of employment. To make ends meet, he worked in an archery and gun repair shop where he invented the in-line black powder muzzleloader in 1985.

As the sun came up on the first day of hunting season in southern Missouri, I realized that I was hunting in the most ideal turkey woods I had ever been in. Approximately 2000 acres of oak ridges and flats dropped into shallow ravine areas, and logging type roads cut through the area. To get from one area to another is extremely easy because of the way the ridges lay out. If you are working a bird and have the opportunity to move on him it's an easy thing to do.

The first day of our hunting, we had several birds working, but nothing close enough to shoot. At one point in time we were doing some blind calling and a bird gobbled about twenty yards away. It appeared briefly and we, of course, were sitting in the wrong position to be able to move and take a shot. Early on the next day we followed one of the long roads to where it literally drops into the St. Joe River and sat on a ridge. We worked a bird for some time but were unable to get that bird to come in. During the calling procedure we heard another bird gobble, but only once or twice. As the first bird got bored with us calling and moved away, we continued to call. In about another fifteen minutes, a bird gobbled, only forty or fifty yards away, over one of the ridges. We stopped calling and let nature take its course.

In a very short time our bird crossed the logging road and spotted our decoy. Moving up the logging road, he went into full strut, fairly oblivious to our presence. At thirty-five yards, I squeezed the trigger on Tony's invention and dropped the bird in it's tracks. Having patterned this gun on paper, and seeing what it could do, I was extremely thrilled to see that it once again exceeded my expectations.

The last day of our hunt was one in which we would have to quit hunting at about 11:30 in order to give me time to drive back to Demoine Iowa, to catch my mid-afternoon flight. After setting up on a bird in the morning, near an old farm foundation, and moving apparently too close and bumping him, we then sat for several hours along one of the logging roads and did some blind calling with no results. It had gotten extremely windy, as it had been for a couple of days in the area.

With about a half hour to go before we had to leave the area, Tony and I were walking on the same road where I had harvested a bird two days earlier. While extremely proficient with all calls, Tony preferred his trusty box call that entire week. We were walking, calling and looking, when all of a sudden we saw a turkey about a hundred yards away.

At that point, I dropped down on one knee and Tony just leaned against a tree alongside of the road. After dropping down, I was in a position where I couldn't see the bird, although Tony still could.

After we called a few times I asked Tony what was happening and he said the bird was still there but didn't seem to be coming in. Calling a couple more times, Tony said, "Here he comes".

The gobbler rounded a little bend in the logging road, and was approximately forty-five yards away. I had the gun up, had the sights on him, but forty five yards?...this is a black powder shotgun. I whispered to Tony, "I think he's too far away" to which Tony said "Bring your sights up about two or three inches on the birds head, and shoot!"

I said, "I think he's too far away" To which Tony replied, "I invented the gun, SHOOT IT!"

Once you squeeze the trigger on a black powder shotgun, the second or two that the smoke shields you from seeing the game seems like an eternity. But as the smoke cleared and I stood up, I could see my bird. A twenty-three pound, eleven and a half-inch beard, one and three eighths-inch spurs gobbler. And he was deader then a doornail.

Tony's black powder shotgun had done its job on two occasions; first at thirty-five yards, and as we found when we stepped this one off, forty-three. Tony tells me that he's harvested birds at fifty-two yards with this gun, and after seeing what it could do, I more then believe that.

The hunting experience in Missouri was one that I'll never forget. Getting to hunt and develop a friendship with this inventor/hunter was very special to me.

I learned a lot; for instance that I sometimes put too much stock in diaphragm and other turkey calls, and that you can spend four days and use nothing but a box call and still get the job done. I also learned that when the man who invented the gun says, " Shoot it!" You shoot it.

I'd like to thank Tony Knight and Knight Rifle for the invitation and for the time spent in the turkey woods of Northern Missouri. I would also like to thank Tony's brother, John, who cook's the best fried turkey, catfish and mushrooms I have ever had.

Publisher note:

At the end of our third day of hunting we had the opportunity to drive north of our hunting location to Centerville, Iowa and tour the Knight Rifle factory and meet a lot of the fine folks there and just get a little more insight into the company.

We also got a look into the inner workings of the company and Ohio Valley Outdoors will feature the Knight Rifle Company in the spring addition in our manufactures section. One of the things that impressed me most, however, was the number of Knight employees reporting to Tony on the birds they had harvested in Iowa and Missouri, and the large number that were lady turkey hunters.