doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Effectiveness of #4 lead

Right on about the crows, jOe. Me, too. I was just surprised at how well it did on those big cock pheasants, which weigh three times what a big old crow weighs.

SRH

He he he
I went to college with Phil Robertson and Terry Bradshaw, what fun, what fun.
Yes #4 shot is great for wild pheasants, I use #5 early and #4 later, and when hunting squirrel in Louisiana, I do like #4 for squirrel when hunting in heavy leaf cover.
Mike

4's for squirrel and rabbit both mean less shot to pick (or spit) out when it comes time to eat the critters...Geo

"Hammer of Thor" pretty much says it. I usually go #6 in the right and #4 in the left when hunting pheasants with my 12 ga.

The difference between a "continental" shoot or a driven shoot (which the continental is supposed to replicate, although driven birds are usually better fliers because they've been out and about for weeks or even months by the time they're shot) and our typical walk-up hunting for wild birds over dogs is that most of our shots are at some sort of outgoing angle. Trap really isn't bad practice for wild pheasants, because unless you're a blocker at the end of a field drive, you're going to get mostly trap-like shots. Within 30 yards or so, most of those birds can be taken with 7 1/2's, the main problem being that you end up with a lot of pellets in the meat. 6's will get you to 40 yards. 5's and 4's become necessary if you're going to take many shots farther out than that--although a lot of pheasant hunters aren't good enough shots to make use of the larger shot because it also requires a tighter choke if we're talking 40 yards +, and the tighter choke will handicap them on the closer birds they're more likely to hit. I've killed more with 6's than anything else; quite a few with British 6's or US 7's, some with 7 1/2's, and some with 5's--typically late season when the birds are all full grown, packing fat to protect them from the cold, and shots can be longer. I've never used anything larger than 5's. But I've also done most of my pheasant hunting over good dogs--the best of which, over a span of 6 seasons, recovered 491 birds shot by me and those hunting with us, while losing only 12. Those who are better shots than I am, and maybe don't have dogs with quite the experience, might well make good use of more choke and larger shot than I do.

The Brits, who more or less invented driven shooting, traditionally use what most American pheasant hunters would consider light loads of shot that's on the small side. The standard choice is British 6, which is slightly larger than our 7's (about 6 2/3). It's mostly a 12ga game, but shot charges are usually an ounce or 1 1/16, sometimes 1 1/8. Those loads work quite well on "typical" driven shoots, where a 40 yard bird is a high one, and the average height is almost certainly under 30 yards. That's the game for which the standard British game gun (2 1/2" 12 weighing 6 1/4-6 3/4#) was designed. And it's as effective today as it ever was.

There's a subset of that game for those who prefer much higher birds. That game requires special terrain--hills, trees, and valleys--in order to offer a consistent diet of 50 yard + shots, with plenty of birds higher than that. Those people mostly shoot OU's like those we see at sporting clays shoots: barrels 30-34", weight upwards of 8#, loads in the vicinity of 1 1/2 oz, through tight chokes.

For those who might be tempted to try a driven shoot for the very high birds, I'd recommend experiencing just your standard garden variety first. Those birds can be plenty challenging. Or at least they are for me.

I used some handloaded 1 ounce #4's in a 16 bore with IM/F chokes on wild pheasant this year with good results. I had to be careful about shooting close in birds too soon as the IM choke can really wreck them.I took one long bird at an honest 40 yards. It was not dead when delivered by my spaniel, but it didn't run, either.

Wow Larry, recovering 491 birds and losing only 12 is a pretty good record. What do you think the score would have been if you followed the advice you gave us on 1/26/16 when you said:


"Lead is toxic. Toxic = bad. Why not get rid of as much of it as possible? And we can shoot steel shot, and there are nontoxic substitutes for lead bullets. So we are ALL going to have to deal with the challenge of why shouldn't we switch, rather than defending the status quo by saying why should we. That, unfortunately, is where we're at. And in states where we don't have strong hunter numbers (like California), we might very well find ourselves in the same boat they're in. All we can do is make as much noise as possible, and insist on "good science". But we're shooting ourselves in the foot if we keep trying to fight the battles we've already lost (like waterfowl)."

Thanks for the useful contribution to the discussion, Keith. The first 3 sentences of that quote represent the position of those who think we should switch from lead to nontox for everything. Not my position. I haven't seen evidence of any good reason we SHOULD switch to nontox for upland birds. In fact, one of the points I made in my articles on lead vs nontox is that there have never been any blind studies done comparing the effectiveness of lead to steel on upland birds. (Pheasants would be a good place to start.) Therefore, we don't know whether we might in fact end up with more lost cripples shooting steel in an effort to get rid of lead shot that does not appear to be harming either upland birds or any other species of wildlife. Therefore, I have no idea what the "score" would have been if I'd been shooting steel. I see no reason to do so for upland birds, other than around wetlands where it's more likely to be ingested by waterfowl.

I'd be glad to continue the discussion, Keith--but elsewhere, in a topic devoted to the lead vs nontox issue. Here, it seems to me, we have plenty to discuss just focusing on LEAD shot size for pheasants.

Hello Larry:

Yours is a great post! I would like to add a bit more. How about results based on double blind data and some peer revues. I am sick to death with unqualified statements re. the election year garbage. Let there be studies done to determine the TRUTH regarding lead shot and the environment.

Be well,

Franchi

Larry's too busy bobbing for a turd in his fish bowl....