doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com experience w/ 3/4oz loads quail,r. grouse,wc,phez?

i have always used 7/8oz #8 for ruffed grouse, woodcock, and quail. if i am sure it will pretty much be just timber doodles or quail i would sometimes use 7/8oz #9. i have never hunted preserve pheasants

a guy who's experience i uber much respect told me he used and suggested i try RST falcon ultra lite 12b 3/4oz 1125fps #8 or $9 for all of the above.

if you would please tell me your experiences with similar loads i would really appreciate it.

thanks!

Sounds good to me, like shooting a 28 gauge and they do quite well!

I have been shooting 3/4 oz. 12 gauge reloads for over 2 years now and really like them. I use mostly Titewad and sometimes Red Dot. I have used them for skeet, sporting clays, 5 stand and some limited trap.
Some 30 years ago, I used a Beretta 28 ga. BL 4 for skeet shooting and all upland shooting and have killed many released pheasants with it. I used to reload the old 28 ga. AA hulls and still have some left.

I used the RST, 12 gauge, 2.5 inch, 3/4 oz., #8, shells for dove this year and they worked just fine. I have used them on quail in the past and they did well there too.

I've used the lite loads and like them for clays (I don't shoot competitively) and love the easy recoil in lighter guns. They work ok for pen raised released quail but you'll wound and lose some wild birds. My practice is to use 1oz loads on wild gamebirds, but if they work for you it's all good with me...Geo

My pet quail load is 3/4oz of #7 shot in my 20ga and 16ga. I have little experience on Bob Whites but decades on western quail in AZ. This load reduced my lost birds considerably as the desert quail, if not killed in the air, will tend to bounce and run off with their last bit of life. Also used it on Hungarian Partridge and a couple Ruffed Grouse in Idaho (they aren't the same wily bird there as the eastern variety). Far too many cripples with 8 and 9 shot especially - possibly a function of typical range being longer than Bob Whites. 7 1/2 shot is as small as I will use on game.

I use 3/4 in light guns 7 lb or under 20 or 16 G. Have used 3/4 in light 12s but prefer 7/8. All SxS . Either load breaks clays fine if the gun is tight choked. Open choked or longer ranges it's not a lot of shot.

Pattern at expected range then choose . After looking at my 3/4 loads on paper went to 7/8 for preserve Quail and Chukars. 20 or 16g. Pheasants I want 1 oz in the 12. lot depends on how you hunt. Close or long shots

Boats

Unless you pick your shots pretty carefully, 3/4 oz anything is definitely light for wild pheasants. Released birds . . . several years back, I loaded up a couple boxes of 3/4 oz 7's for my 28ga. Worked extremely well on a couple dozen plus preserve roosters. Didn't lose a bird. That being said, I did have 2 or 3 that I think might have been lost if they'd been wild birds, which I've observed are much more tenacious. But good dog work resulted in no lost cripples.

I've had really good results shooting 3/4 oz 20ga loads at skeet. Shot 94/100 last weekend, low gun with a light sxs, in 4 practice rounds. Don't think shooting factory skeet loads would've made any difference.

On small birds like woodcock and quail, or even relatively "thin-skinned" larger birds like ruffed grouse (particularly early in the season), I think 3/4 oz should be OK. That being said, unless I'm shooting a 28ga, I usually stick with 7/8 oz.

As far as shot size goes, I'm OK with 8's, or even 8 1/2's or 9's for woodcock--but I don't shoot many of them beyond 20 yards; often much closer.

I shoot early season doves regularly now with a .410, and have used 11/16 and 1/2 ounce loads extensively. What I can say for certain concerning lightening the payload for wild birds is this ............. get too light and you will start seeing less stone dead birds hit the ground. Better have a dog when you get on the extreme end of light loads. I reaffirm this every dove season by beginning using 1/2 oz. loads of 8s, then going to 11/16 as the birds get warier and older, then 7/8, and end up using 1 oz. of 7 1/2s on the old tough migratory birds. The short of it ...... less shot and smaller shot, more cripples.

The other variable in all this is choke. You have to have density in the pattern, whatever your load is, to kill reliably. My above experience is with pretty tight chokes. The only time I will ever go under .015" is for bobs. My most open choke for doves is .015", and I will not hesitate to use .025" in the right barrel. And I clean them all, and eat them, so normally, no "shot to pieces" birds.

SRH

In my 28ga preserve pheasant experiment, I had 2 reasons for loading 7's: First, 3/4 oz 6's is a pretty skimpy load, while 3/4 oz 7's gives you about the same pellet count as an ounce of 6's (225). Second, I was using relatively open chokes: IC/Mod. 7's helped fill the pattern. (Had I not gone with the reloads, my next choice probably would have been 7 1/2's.) But, again, preserve birds. Virtually all of them pointed, close flushes. I did get a couple true doubles, but the 2nd bird in one case is a rooster that might well have escaped had he been a wild bird. He made a pretty good run as it was.