I am by no means an expert or have even used all the different flavors of the "unleaded." But being an occasional watefowler and with more and more public land allowing non-toxics only even for upland hunting, I've sorted through a few of them. In spite of the price I've settled on Kent tungsten-matrix because it's density is 10.60 gms/cc compared to lead at 11.10 so it's very close and I can rely on five decades of brain-memory, shot judgement because it flies and kills like lead as far as I can tell. Not insignificantly, I have two SxS with fixed chokes so I can use them with this shot without worry of scored or bulged barrels.
I also found Bismuth to work quite well on ducks and pheasants but would do a mental, acceptable, range-reset to 90% of what it would be with lead.
My most unpleasant memory involving early (for me anyway) then appropriate-sized, steel shot was pass shooting geese in the 90's with steel where even at 35-40 yards we saw hits and even heard hits that geese "flew through" or coasted off hundreds of yards before hitting the ground. Granted, no doubt steel shotshells have come a long ways in two decades but because of the two guns mentioned above and even in several autoloaders I refuse to use it in the gunning I do.
Last edited by George_De_Vries_3rd; 06/16/17.
