I would like to get some opinions on the quality of RST shot-shells, especially the #10 shot for quail. I plan to order a case of some brand...just wondering? Any suggestions? I have used Poly-Wads, vintage #8's, in the past...ok.

Thanks
Binko

No help: I've never seen a quail. Isn't No. 10 what museums use to collect specimens with least damage possible?

I generally hunt bobwhite with #8s. I have occasionally used #9s for bobwhite when shooting 28ga 5/8oz loads.

I have shot a couple of flats of RSTs. Didn't pattern them. Certainly seemed effective to me.

Good luck.

I have been shooting both brands for a number of years. Even though Polywad is located in my home state, I'd have to give the nod to RST from my experience...Geo

I'm curious why that is, Geo. Does it have anything to do with quality, or performance?

SRH

RST #10 shotshells are great to add to your collection, as I have, one box. However, I would never use #10 for any game bird, no matter how small. They just lose velocity and energy too fast. They also put too many holes in the bird. #8 is a good compromise for smaller birds.

aren't the nbr 10's promoted as a woodcock load?

early season in thick cover where the shots are so close you need an old west gunslinger's reflexes to get a shot off, i can see some value. Most of the load will be absorbed by the flora and fauna long before it reaches the bird or loses its energy.

Woodcock in general do not carry shot well no matter the size

and for museum collecting of small birds, the shot size was referred to as dust, I think it comes out as a size 12

#10 was outlawed for skeet.

If they're inhumane for skeet targets, who would shoot a live animal with them?

I don't understand your use of the idiom. Fauna means animals. What animals will be absorbing the nbr 10's before they reach the woodcock?

I use RST shells and like them a lot. I use RST #8 on quail. Never used the RST #10's though.

When I began buying vintager type loads from Polywad, they came loose 250+/- to the flat. A few would misfire and I discovered on dove shoots that the spreader (double-wide) loads were useless beyond 15 yards. Their Vintager (non-spreader)loads on the other hand shot too tight a pattern in the old tightly choked sxs guns I owned at the time.

I switched to RST and lo and behold they came packaged in actual boxes. I addition their low pressure loads did not pattern so tightly. Of course now Polywads are boxed also.

Now, I suppose they are about the same and Polywad is great since they can get a flat of shells to me from Macon very quickly. I shoot both. I guess the real answer is an early bias against the Polywads...Geo

I've hunted quail a lot and don't even use #9 shot, let alone #10. Really, I'd rather use #7 1/2 shot than #8's. IMHO, #10 shot is way too small for wild quail.

Season before last, I acquired a 28ga during the grouse/woodcock season. Wanted to try it out; was given a box of the 10's. I don't recall what, but I had a handful of something else I was using in the 2nd barrel. I hit 2 woodcock with the 10's, put them down, had them fly off again. Got one of them on the 2nd flush, never found the other. Hit one on a crossing shot at relatively close range--with no choke in the R barrel--and it had a LOT of little pellets in it.

I really like small shot for woodcock, and even grouse early in the season. I have no problem with 8 1/2 or even 9, especially in the 28ga. And I really like RST shells. But the 10's are too small for me.

That being said, if you read "classic" woodcock literature--like John Alden Knight's woodcock book--you will find references to hunters shooting woodcock with 10's.

I am not a Bob White quail hunter. We don't have that type here in AZ. But I do hunt Gambels, and Scaled quail. My experience on these hardy wild birds is the best shot size is 7s and 71/2s if you can't get 7 shot. Both these birds hit the ground, bounce once and come up running. I want enough penetration to get into the vital areas so they are dead in the air. When I switched from 8s and 9s to 7s the numbers of hit but lost birds went way down. I wouldn't even consider 10 shot and smaller for game birds. Might be okay for those who participate in starling shooting.

around here that early in the season - mosquitoes

I think 10 shot might be a snipe load in old times. Too dense and too small for quail or dove to my way of thinking.

Another idiom. Open mouth insert foot. Ha.

I have hunted quite a lot of Wild Quail. I have gone to 7 1/2s instead of eights because they are hard to kill. 10's would be a wounder on those birds.

Actually, IMO, no.

The topic of small(ish) shot for gamebirds always entails observations of birds killed with the little shot. No doubt, every bird brought to bag counts as success. But what about the flip side? Birds hit and lost? Grouse and woodcock (probably the most frequent victims of little shot) are particularly succeptible to escaping wounded with the gunner having no clue, likely convinced he missed cleanly. I once had the rare opportunity to watch a "missed" ruffed grouse fly 200+ yds and fall dead.

For a few summers I spent a lot of time shooting starlings at a dairy farm. Wide open pass shooting at any distance I wanted from 10 yards to infinity. I don't recall using 9's, perhaps because I tried them and gave them up almost immediately. I did shoot a fair number with #8 before switching to #7.5 permanently. I've never fired at a live bird with anything smaller than #7.5 since.

Birds hit with #8 often fell dead at the shot but many of them didn't visibly react to the shot only to fall dead 30, 40 or 50 yds beyond the shot.....distances far in excess of what I can typically see in the grouse woods. And rarely, if ever, did I see a feather pulled from a bird hit with #8. I found #7.5 to be better in every regard. There were often feathers in the air, birds fell dead, fell obviously crippled (seldom) or flew forever.

I can't comment on the #10 shot from experience but have avoided it for the reasons stated. I have used RST #8s and 7.5s to hunt quail in GA several times and my experience was that they performed very well on both ends of the gun. I tested some RST spreaders against Polywads last year and found the RSTs threw slightly tighter patterns that had less variation between shots and fewer holes in the patterns (at least out of a 12 ga. Vernon-Carron sxs).

Thanks, Geo. I use to order the Polywads from Jay when they came loose in a flat, 250 count. Never used his spreaders, but what I bought was 2 1/2" Vintagers for my short chambered Hollis damascus gun. Don't recall ever having had a misfire.

All my best, SRH

I found it very interesting that, while reading a book about grouse hunting in the late 1800's, the author had this to say

"The charges that I have used for many years in a 12-gauge seven pound cylinder bored gun, with entirely satisfactory results, are, for the right barrel-which I nearly always use first-three drams of good black powder with five-eighths of an ounce of number 10 shot, and for the left barrel the same amount of powder with seven-eighths of an ounce of No. 8 shot. These charges give good penetration and pattern, while the recoil is scarcely noticeable."...."I was shooting quail in North Carolina with my friend Harry Reade, when his shells gave out and I handed him some loaded with No. 8 as above described, but he could do nothing with them, missing one-half of his birds, while those that he hit were so badly torn that they were worthless. I then gave him some that were loaded with No.10, and with them he did some excellent work, killing eight or ten without a miss, and so well did he like them that he declared he would use no other charge."

Maybe the number 10 shot used over a hundred years ago was larger then what is sold today, but I don't think there is much difference.
Pete

I've never attributed what I call the "dead bird flying" syndrome to shot size. Rather, at least from my observations, it's a function of where you hit the bird. Quite obviously, if it doesn't drop immediately, you haven't broken a wing. And the ones I've recovered don't show any head wounds.

But it's something I've seen numerous times with pheasants. Little or no visible reaction from the bird to the shot. But I've learned that if you think you hit the bird, you need to keep watching it as long as you can. (Much easier to do on open country birds, like pheasants, than on grouse and woodcock.) People often talk about the "towering" phenomenon, when you hit a bird and it flies straight up, then dies in the air and tumbles back to earth. Haven't seen that often, but I have seen pheasants continue flying as far as 2-300 yards, then just fall from the sky. What I've found with birds that behave in that manner: 1. They are dead, won't move from where they hit the ground; and 2. Their chest cavity is full of blood. Seems to be a function of severing a major blood vessel. Heart keeps pumping, bird keeps flying until it bleeds out, at which point it crashes.

Haven't often seen it with grouse or woodcock, mainly because you lose sight of them sooner. But a few years ago, my partner took a shot at a grouse with his 28ga, thought he'd missed. No feathers. But I told him I thought I'd seen a very slight "jerk" from the bird after the shot. We followed the bird's flight path as best we could. Maybe 150-200 yards farther on, my Brittany went on point. Big log in front of us. Didn't know whether it was the bird we were following or another one, or whether the bird we were following had been hit--so approached at the ready. Diesel vaulted the log, spun around, and pointed back at us from the far side. It was my buddy's grouse, stone dead, lying behind the log. When we cleaned it, we found the chest cavity full of blood--as I have on numerous pheasants. (And most of them have been hit with 6's, or even 5's.)

With grouse and woodcock, our rule is to always follow a bird we've shot at, if you have any notion at all that you may have hit it.

Over on the Fox Collector's forum our member SILVERS has a piece about killing a grouse with his 16 gauge Fox using RST's #10.
Got the picture of the bird to prove it.

I used RST 10's almost exclusively on woodcock this past season and they were great and hard hitting but only at close distances, either in the open or shooting through light cover.

As mentioned, they don't carry much energy beyond 20 yards or so and I ended up wounding more birds than I would have in the past with larger shot (I think). This was not a huge problem since I hunt with dogs and all wounded birds were quickly retrieved but I was troubled by this increase in wounded birds. Next year I will either go back to 8's or severely limit my shooting to only close in birds with RST 10's.

On live game, only if shooting over a pointing dog and engaging in 10-15 yards. 10 shot does not hold energy over the same distances as other shot. I do not argue that some may effectively push it out to 20 yards, but advise you test in tighter.

That said I almost exclusively shoot over a point and have moved to larger shot as my standard (#7). I did this to reduce number of shot hitting the bird and to ensure solid hard clean kills.

I would never use #10 for wild birds except under prefect conditions. If you pass shoot much (something I am not particularly good at) I would definitely stick to larger shot. My solution when going to blocking (the rare time I block on pheasant) is to increase charge size (from 1 oz to 1 1/8) and leave everything else the same shot size and velocity (about 1150 for everything)

You owe to live game to use the most effective killing load within the constraints of the type of shooting you are doing and your individual strengths and weaknesses.

I have had the same experience with bobwhite.

Many times, after the bob we were aiming at in the covey rise is bagged, we have gone two or three hundred yards and the dogs found another dead bird, freshly killed.

Another indication of a hit on otherwise healthy flying bob is a dropped leg. Upon having the bird in hand the leg won't be broken, just loss of hydraulic pressure from the internal bleedout I suppose.

10's won't break a skeet target except at 1,7, and 8, no enegery even at 20 yards
bill

There's a saying that's applicable to a wide variety of topics on gun forums...."Just because you can doesn't mean you should."

Right, Mike. I can kill a goose with a Louisville Slugger, but I choose not to.