Lagopus,
Your experiment with the Ithaca 37 duplicates what I also found to be true with steel. I do suspect one could make an argument that steel works very well for clay pigeon sports, but, the range it is useful on with actual birds is a pretty narrow band....
I think if just a single load with a single shot size is considered, this may be true, but steel can be plenty enough for a wide range of conditions. I'd very much rather use lead, and actually miss it some on ducks, but any game bird well centered up with lead isn't any more appealing than with steel shot.
For me too, waterfowl are still just way too much fun to walk away from. I appreciate that Lagopus, like some of the other folks that comment from his neck of the world, is willing to share how little it takes to make folks give up.
