Seeing as how it is only 18 days and a wake-up 'til dove season opens, my mind is operating in shades of grey (feathers). I have been wondering about this to myself, and now aloud.
A little background. I have shot doves pretty much continuously for 52 seasons, starting at age 8. This will be season number 53 for me. I have always used 8s for early season doves (except for a short stint using 9s on early birds), and 7 1/2s for those late season, tough, migratory rockets that sometimes must be coaxed down to crash in a field from dizzying heights. I have gravitated toward tighter chokes over the years for the late season, striving to keep as dense a pattern as possible at the extreme distances (heights) we sometimes get shooting. There have been times I have questioned the energy of 7 1/2s at that distance.
Now, the question. Have any of our members here ever used 6s on high doves enough to have formed an opinion of the effectiveness of it. I, specifically, am interested in it's use through tight chokes, as I feel this would be imperative in order to maintain the pattern density necessary to prevent voids in the pattern at range. I know all the arguments about not shooting that high (far), and I also know that the tighter the choke the less room for error in centering the bird. Let's get past that to the actual efficacy of the combination, and it's use on high doves.
Thanks for your time, SRH
