I found that I copied and saved the SSM articles by Batha and Venters. Venters' article makes reference to an article in Fieldsports magazine, which included a survey of "Britain's 15 best driven game shots". 12 of them shot OU's, and one of the 3 sxs shooters stated: "If you want to shoot seriously high pheasants, then use a heavy OU and big loads." If you're shooting only partridge (which would be the case in September), I expect you can get by with both smaller shot and lighter loads, although still probably heavier than the 1 or 1 1/16 oz loads of British 6's used on driven shoots that don't specialize in very high birds.

Venters' article points out that the definition of a "tall" bird has changed in the last century or so: "When Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey published "High Pheasants in Theory and Practice" a year before the First World War, a 30-yard bird was described as "tall", one 40 yards overhead was only occasionally killable, and anything taken much higher was purely a victim of bad luck on the pheasant's part." From what I've seen, that's still a pretty good description of driven shoots that don't specialize in high birds.

In the concluding paragraph of Batha's "Hitting High Pheasants" article, he says: "Still, for us mere mortals, a clean kill on a 40-yard pheasant is an awesome shot to pull off." I'd add "amen!" to that.

Last edited by L. Brown; 02/13/15 12:05 PM.