So Dad's favourite and most used gun is said Beretta, sitting in a safe for 30 years. Dusted it off, slapped a truglo rmr rib mount base and holosun 407c red dot on it, triad tactical shot shell holder and comb raiser for alignment to the red dot and patterned a shotgun for the first time.

40 yards, 8 different types of 00 buckshot.

This one is a 3" magnum with 28" fixed full choke barrel, proofed 1975 so 49 years old now.

The federal premium tight wad plated stuff was ok, bigger patterns but still decent 2nd choice imo to what turned out to be the best choice.

Regular Remington 2 3/4" 9 pellet at 1325.

I documented 6 shots at 40 yards on shipping paper with a sharpie dot over 2' wide plywood, 54 pellets total, all in the proverbial body no prob but 46-48 of them (85-89%) landed inside a 12" circle.

Quick math assuming 54 gr pellets at say 1320 fps for lack of 2" on standard 30" velocity, should have about 1016 fps left at 40 and 973 at 50. Feels like it will kill deer to 50 without stretching.

That was a ton of fun, the old girl still works like a champ although it only did waterfowl for a dozen years steady then slowed down for a couple years of just a couple hunts a year. No trap or volume range stuff.

May have to fill a tag or two with it, I'm not really into the birds so this way I can resurrect it and keep it producing for the freezer. And maybe come coyote/wolf calling also.

Any buckshot hunters here? What's thoughts on this performance? I was pleased to find an affordable common load that patterned out of the fixed full choke! Makes life easy to get this going. And also, my assessment of 50 yard potential accurate?