On Saturday I was patterning my shotgun because I put a Gobble Stopper sight on it. Being in the building material business, I had a few damaged 6 panel hardboard doors lying around that I decided to use to hold my targets. I started at 25 yards with #6 lead shot and none of the pellets went entirely through the hollow core door. I wasn't terribly surprised since the hardboard skins are very hard and dense. What really got my attention was that when I shot a magnum blend Hevi shot #5 and #7, the #7's did not even penetrate the skin of the door. They just lodged in the skin. It made me think of GN's warnings about penetration issues with the small sized Hevi shot. This is obviously in no way any kind of scientific experiment, it just gave me pause when I noticed it.

Thank God a turkeys head is not made out of the same material! I have seen so many posts on other sites where guys set up plywood, soup cans, etc to show how well tungsten based shot penetrates vs. lead. Some guys even dissect the heads to show how deep Hevi or TSS goes. I for one don't care about how deep it penetrates I just want enough force and enough shot to snap a neck and for me lead 5's does it.

Agreed. The old "how dead does a turkey have to be?". I did not set out to prove or disprove any theory. It just surprised me a little to see some of the pellets stuck in the skin of the door.

I hate wrestling a turkey especially when hrs flogging and flipping. My buddy shot one 2 years ago he hit it hard enough to drop it but it flopped for 10 minutes even with our foots on his head. He try ed to pick it up and spin the neck but it spurred the crap out of him. I asked what he was shooting #7s. I'm not knocking them and I know they kill but I'm a 4 and 5s guy always have I used to love when they sold shot shells mixed 4,5,6s but I haven't seen them in years.

I do not know what kind of #7s you are talking about but I switched to a 20 gauge 4 years ago and have killed 12 mature gobblers that were extremely dead. I am shooting the Federal HW #7 shot and I see much less flopping than with 3 inch 12 gauge buffered #4s that I used for more than 20 years.

not sure how to compare flopage , but some things notable to my experience are that:
I have a lot less flopage and cripple chases with my leupold scope than i had with models of prior Dots and prior add-on sights;
Eye surgery vastly improved aging eyesight;
lead 4's have been good to me and bad for gobblers for four decades, so if it aint broke etc…...