I have to admit to not have had the stomach to read most of the above after some point. That being said, and please forgive me if it has already been stated in the melee above but with todays tungsten based shot I played with a 3/4 oz load of #5 15G/ccm in a 20ga that could have been easily adapted to 28ga. At 1200fps it was calculating out to have better penetration and pellets on target at 60yds than 1 1/2oz of BBB steel at 1500fps plus.
Patterns and velocity over the chronograph bore most of that out to be true.
Still have a few pellets rolling about but it is very expensive...18g/ccm is or was available too......
Best,
Mark
If we're talking tungsten matrix, assuming the same pellet count you get with lead (and I think that's close), 3/4 oz 5's gives you fewer than 130 pellets. I'd want pretty much all of those in a 30" circle if I wanted to be sure of killing a pheasant--and even with an 80% pattern, you're barely going to have 100 hits at 40 yards. I'm a big fan of the stuff, having killed a mallard at a paced-off 50+ yards with TM 5's. But that was a 1 1/4 oz load.
LD, we lost a lot of good habitat in Iowa when the CRP rules changed under the 96 Farm Bill. That being said, my average was still in the mid-60's per season from 2001-08--but there are far fewer "pheasant hotspots" in Iowa than there used to be, no doubt. Like you, I don't kill a limit every time out--sometimes because of poor shooting, sometimes because I don't see enough birds in range, and sometimes because I'm content to stop a bird or two short. I'd be even less comfortable with a 28ga as my go-to pheasant gun in Iowa now than I was back when we had lots more birds.
