I have an 870 with a 3" chamber with a Paternmaster choke tube. This thing is deadly out to 50 yards. I have seldom hot anything with it past 30. I do not use it much any more as I am too old and busted up to tackle the thickets as I once did. A deer in the thickets is running like a bat out of Hades, dodging stumps and trees and zig-zaging like a snipe or a woodcock. Not only that you can only see bits and pieces of them once they get going. Hitting one with a rifle or a hand gun is not likely if it starts moving before you shoot, and most of them are moving in a hurry. Besides, like another poster said, buckshot appears to penetrate thick stuff where a bullet will not go through. I am partial to #1 buck for that reason when it is really thick.

Don't listen to anyone that says buckshot is not effective on deer. Like other posters have said, you have got to be willing to live within the limitations.

There was no greater freedom than when I would leave Holiday Park Fish Camp heading my airboat west toward the Big Cypress. Fuel for 4 days, a good machete, an ice chest. No phone, no radio. Just God and me and the Everglades.