I don’t use nines on any game birds. Just not enough penetration to reach a vital. In the .410 I use 8’s, 7 1/2’s for 28 and above for birds. I do like 7’s for larger birds or later season when birds are bigger and feathers thicker. Early season Dove are well serviced with 8’s out to about 30-32 yards in my full choked .410. And to make sure of my ranges I do walk off and mark my shooting area with known distances from most angles of approach. The only times I shoot longer than that are when birds have clearly been hit by another and are leaving the field, perhaps to die unrecoverable. So I will try to dispatch them a bit beyond my normal shooting range. I hate waste of game birds.

I still use 9’s at skeet but nothing else. Plated shot does reduce feather dragging but it is expensive and hard to find for reloading. I long for the days when I could load copper plated 5’s for ducks and copper plated 2’s for geese. Those were the days to me.