Ducks and geese can be killed efficiently inside of 40 yards with 2 3/4" field loads with 1 1/4 oz of shot.
Back in the days of lead, my dad was a pretty avid trapshooter, and reloader. Come duck season, we'd just dump bigger shot (5s or so) in to the bottle, and crank out a bunch of 1 1/8 oz loads in AA hulls, just like he used for trap shooting with 8 shot, without changing a thing other than shot size.
I grew up shooting ducks and geese with those loads, and never knew that I was apparently being handicapped with such anemic, short, loads.
Substitute any of the number of the various new non-toxic materials available today for our old lead, and I go on shooting those old 2 3/4" loads happily.
