Several years ago the great amount of time a friend of mine wasted in his futile search of just that inspired me to draw a cartoon and send it to him. In it, my friend had just fired his shotgun and the wad had been stopped in midair by a long string attached to the barrel. But of course, that particular method works only in cartoons with kids' guns that fire cork projectiles.

Unlike a conventional plastic shotshell wad (L), Federal's FliteControl wad (C, R) has no slits in the shotcup wall, but slits in its base skirt form petals that act as airbrakes during flight.

Leave it to Federal engineer Rochelle Poore to figure out a way to accomplish what was once considered impossible, and there is no string attached to what she came up with. In fact, it is one of those "why didn't I think of that?" ideas. Here is how the revolutionary new FliteControl wad works. First of all, since the wall of its shotcup has no slits like a conventional plastic wad, there is no way the shot can make contact with the bore of the barrel. The gas-sealing skirt at the concave base of the wad does have weakening slits, six to be exact. As the wad exits the bore during firing, propellant gas pushing on its base causes the skirt to separate into six extremely stiff petals and then flex outward to become airbrakes. Simply put, the petals at the base of the FliteControl wad serve the same basic purpose as the feathers on a badminton shuttlecock.

During the developmental stages, it was discovered that optimum shot/wad separation distance could vary from load to load. In other words, one load might deliver its best patterns when the shot charge and wad had traveled only a few feet from the muzzle before separating while another load performs best when shot/wad separation takes place farther downrange. Its design allows the FliteControl wad to be programmed to separate from the shot charge at various distances from the muzzle, and this is accomplished by making modifications to the six slits in its skirt at the factory.

As slit length is increased so is the surface area of each petal, and the greater the total surface area exposed to air resistance, the quicker the wad slows down. With the three-inch turkey load, total shot/wad charge separation takes place at about 20 feet from the muzzle although its momentum usually causes the wad to tag along behind the shot for 30 yards or so before it drops to the ground. The flexible shotcup petals of a plastic wad of conventional design cause it to begin its separation from the shot charge immediately upon exiting the muzzle, and because propellant gas escaping around it is traveling at considerably higher velocity, the shot charge is unable to outrun the turbulence created by the gas as it impacts the air.

This disruption of the shot charge can cause the pellets to begin dispersing quite soon after exiting the muzzle, which results in fewer pellets in the very center of the pattern where they are needed most in a turkey load. Pattern core density is greater with the FliteControl wad for several reasons but mainly due to the fact that the shot charge remains protected inside the shotcup until it has traveled beyond the influence of propellant gas turbulence at the muzzle.

The FliteControl wad has one other small but important detail worth mentioning. Early on it was discovered that even though the six petals at the rear were doing an effective job of putting on the brakes at a predetermined distance, some of the pellets inside would occasionally bridge and stubbornly refuse to leave the shotcup at the optimal distance from the muzzle of the gun. The problem was overcome by cutting three vents completely through the wall of the shotcup; immediately upon exiting the muzzle, the stiff flaps of those vents open just enough to allow air pressure to enter at the rear of the shotcup cavity and the turbulence created serves to agitate the pellets sufficiently to prevent bridging. What we have is a shotshell wad that looks and performs like it was developed by NASA rather than by a manufacturer of sporting ammunition.

In addition to increasing pattern core density, the FliteControl wad was also designed to deliver optimal pattern performance when fired in guns with a wide range of choke constrictions. So before rushing out and spending money on a super-tight turkey choke, try the one marked "Full" that came with your gun. Most chokes wearing that marking have somewhere in the neighborhood of .035 to .040 inch of choke, and if most of your shots at gobblers are inside 35 yards, it may be all you need. You will probably need more choke for longer ranges, but even then .050 inch should get the job done out to 40 yards and .060 inch should extend the effective range of your gun to an honest 50 yards.

At the 40-yard pattern board, I compared the performance of Federal's old Mag-Shok turkey load with the new Mag-Shok load with FliteControl by seeing how many pellets each would place in an eight-inch circle (the approximate length of a gobbler's head and neck). Both were three-inch loads with two ounces of No. 6 copper-plated, buffered shot. The Franchi test gun had .060 inch of choke constriction. As incredible as it might seem, the new load outperformed the old load by 37 percent.

More specifically, the load with the FliteControl wad placed an average of 81 pellets inside the eight-inch circle at 40 yards compared to an average of 59 pellets for the load with the conventional wad. And while there was less difference between the two loads when less choke constriction was used (29 percent with .050 inch of choke and 21 percent with .040 inch of choke), the FliteControl load still outgunned the old load by enough to matter in the field.

I would be greatly surprised if Federal's exciting new turkey load with its revolutionary FliteControl wad does not perform equally well in your gun.