When I saw that the title of this thread was about a nut case who lived to duck hunt, I thought somebody had finally published my life story....:)
Like Oskar, I too have been in this game a long time. 40 years for me. I grew up on the Eastern Shore of Md. Started hunting in the early 70's when lead and the A5 were King. One of my friend's father ran a goose guiding business and I went along occasionally. When the mandate to use steel hit, it was only for 12 ga. ALL the serious hunters that I knew went out and bought 16 ga guns so that they could continue to use lead. My parents house was on a peninsula of land with a huge corn field behind it and a large body of water in front. The geese would fly back and forth over out house and the first couple of seasons where steel was mandated, the geese would bleed all over the cars, the sidewalk, everything.
In the spring we would be in the marsh trapping muskrats. Never once did we find a dead duck in the marsh. Trapping season was followed closely by eel potting for crab bait. We were out there, in the boats, pulling eel pots by the score, close to shore, close enough to see back into the marsh and again, we found no dead ducks.
The body of opinion on the Shore was that this was yet another way for the State of Md, and their notoriously anti hunting DNR to back door restrict hunting.
Yes Oskar, today's steel shells are head and shoulders above the first generation of steel, but they are no where near what lead shells are capable of. As far as I'm concerned, if a steel shell load isn't traveling at 1500 FPS or better, I'm not buying it. (and no I don't like Hyper Sonics, they kick too much) Velocity is what has made today's steel tolerable.
2 years ago when I was told I had cancer, I made the surgeon hold off on scheduling the operation till after the season was over. If the bag limits were reduced to one bird a day, I would still go out before first light and set decoys and wait to see what dawn brings.
Mergus, nutcase....
