And I'd say guys who haven't seen mangled birds haven't seen enough birds.
For 20 years, until Iowa pheasant numbers started to decline significantly, I averaged 65 wild roosters/year. Hunting over dogs, I never felt that I needed the first barrel to be any tighter than IC.
Larry,
To your first point I'd respond that anybody who has seen more than a handful of mangled birds isn't exercising enough restraint. I don't shoot pheasants inside 25 yds, and locally that means a rooster getting up at 20 yds often has an opportunity to live another day. On my western hunts in open terrain I'd have considered it absolutely unjustifiable to shoot one inside 25 yds. Thus, while I've seen a very few pheasants mangled, I haven't done it myself. And every time I've witnessed it I've said to myself, and sometimes out loud, "Really? was that necessary?"
These many mangled pheasants you've seen, what choke under what conditions accounted for that? and do you believe the shooter error was one of choke selection and not poor judgement in taking the shot?
Regarding your second point; in killing these 1300 roosters where an IC would have sufficed, did you never see one "escape" with every indication of a clean miss only to fly several hundred yards and drop dead? I've seen it many times myself. I had the rare opportunity once to see a ruffed grouse "missed cleanly" then fly 300 yds and drop dead. Experiences like that taught me to question whether there was anything I could do to up my odds of making a clean kill. Things like picking my shots, chokes and ammunition to err on the side of a more-than-adequate shot pattern and practicing my wingshooting on ten or twenty thousand clay targets a year.
Seems we're prone to only count those birds brought to bag and that is somehow validation for whatever was used. If it involved a cylinder choke and a good dog running down a cripple...well, I guess some people count that a success. To me it's an embarassment.
Mike, I'd start by pointing out that guys like you and Stan are way above average in shooting skill. When a guy like Brister writes a book on shotgunning, if he aimed only for you guys, he'd have a very small potential audience. Same with me, when I write a book on pheasant hunting, or articles on bird hunting, chokes and loads, etc. A lot of our readers are going to fall within the group, as tested by Tom Roster in his CONSEP program (I think something like 20,000 people now run through the program) who cannot hit half the crossing clay targets at 20 yards. And the sad fact is, a very solid majority of those he tested could not do that.
Re the value of cylinder, Brister points out: "I do know that at 25 yards a pure cylinder barrel will throw one of the deadliest game-getting patterns you ever looked at, more efficient at that yardage than a full choke barrel at 50 yards." One reason I don't mangle pheasants is because I use less choke than most people. And I will indeed put a pheasant on the ground at 25 yards. Why? Well, if I happen to make a slight "aiming error" and that bird comes down with some life in him, there's very little chance he will escape my dog. If I do the same and put him on the ground at 45 yards with life in him, it takes the dog that much longer to get there, giving the bird that much more chance to escape. If you look at the statistics from Roster's steel shot lethality tests, you'll find that almost no birds escaped if they were dropped inside 30 yards. And that's using loads as light as an ounce of steel 6's. "Wounding losses" were 5 time as great beyond 40 yards as inside 30 yards. And overall, the wounding loss rate in Roster's test was over twice what my own is. True, his hunters were taking some longer shots and using pretty light loads, but they were also shooting the easier to knock down and recover preserve birds, versus my own records on the hardier and more likely to run wild birds.
I can't say what results in mangled pheasants or anything else, but too much choke at a bird that's too close is the likely combination to do it. And with quail, woodcock, grouse, prairie chickens, etc. Happens more frequently than it should. As far as pheasants go, since Roster's tests showed that an ounce of steel 6's are adequate at 30 yards, and since most people aren't very reliable shots much beyond 30 yards, most pheasant hunters would be well served to hold their fire on anything outside 30 yards, and use a cylinder or skeet-bored gun shooting an ounce of lead 7 1/2's. That choke-load combination would do a fine job with little mangling.
As for the "dead bird flying", that bird has in fact absorbed a lethal hit. It's just not immediately lethal. And I've never thought of it as being a function of the choke in question. Rather, that the pellet strike(s) did not do their job in the first few seconds. However, I've never considered those birds to be any sort of problem. They fly, you watch them, they fall from the sky, you go pick them up. About the only hard part can be finding them if they drop in heavy cover because, dropping dead, they don't leave a lot of scent for your dog to work with. But every one of them I've ever seen, when they exhibit that behavior, is dead on the spot. I'm far more concerned with the ones that come down with two good legs and some life left in them.
If you hunt much, especially pheasants, there will always be cripples and there will always be misses, even on birds that should be easy. Back in 1988, a hunting partner and I entered the US Open Pheasant Championship--one of those "run and gun" affairs where it's two hunters and a dog in a relatively small field with 6 pheasants released. Winning score is based on getting the 6 birds in the least amount of time, using the fewest shells. Of the 150 teams entered, only 38 got their 6 birds within the 30 minute time limit, and only 3 of those 38 teams (one of them being me and my partner) killed their 6 birds with 6 shots. Results on wild birds won't be that good.
So, in summary, a lot of people need the help a more open choke will give them. Most people don't shoot 10,000 targets a year, nor even 1,000. Probably should, but we're dealing with reality here, not what should be. Again, per Brister:
"The value of just a little more pattern spread at close range, or the disadvantage of not enough of it, can easily be proved on a skeet range. Take out your modified or full-choke hunting gun sometime and see how many skeet targets you can break with it. If you're a champ you may break them all. But if you're an average shooter you're more likely to be embarrassed."
Mike, you may seek out coverts where you have to take your grouse at 30 yards or more. (Most places I hunt grouse, at least until the leaves are down, it'd be a rare ruff I could even SEE at 30 yards!) Most people seek out places they can find grouse and have a reasonable chance of putting them in the bag. For most people, that 30 yard grouse is going to be approaching (or may well already have flown beyond) their maximum effective range. So if you can use tight chokes, they're wonderful things. But most people would rather have the 70% pattern of a cylinder bore at 25 yards--or would certainly shoot better if they did--rather than the 70% pattern of a full choke at 40 yards (which throws a 100% pattern at 25 yards).
