Stan might know this but I wonder if more than a few shooters take into account shot drop at 50, 60 yards and greater range. It is real. Consider that your pattern is expanding and falling from the second it exits the barrel. Mostly the expanding pattern corrects for the pattern dropping but once you get much past 40 yards the pattern expansion starts to get too thin around the edges to make up for the lower point of pattern impact.
Years ago I had a friend shooting lead shot, who could kill ducks pass shooting at 75-80 yards. Ducks cut the corner of our field and were flying within about a ten yard wide highway. Directly behind our blind heading to a pond in the field. He had an Ithaca Mag10 loaded with 2 1/8 ounce lead shot at a hot back then 1300fps. We patterned that gun at 40, 50, 60 and 70 yards. He knew the pattern size and the drop at those ranges. He taped a cheat sheet to his shooting bag. 70 yards he allowed for three feet drop. By trial and error he got so good he could kill two out of three ducks at 70 yards. He explained he used 14 feet of lead with 3 feet hold over the flight line. I borrowed his gun and killed the second and fourth duck I shot at. I forgot to hold over on the third shot and got nothing. He said, and I agree I did not have enough lead on the first shot. I wish we could use lead shot these day. Our best loads were whimpy by todays standards.
