Tweed;
Good morning to you, I hope that the week treated you okay and this finds you well.
When our girls were younger and starting out hunting they used to be pretty hard on the local grouse population, which we encouraged because it was good practice for shooting under field conditions.
The rifle was always a 1958 Brno Model 5 and it ran a few different scopes starting with an 3X El Paso Weaver, 6X Leupold Compact and finally a 4X El Paso Weaver. Of them all I'd say that the 3X was the best for head shooting grouse, but the experimenting with the 6X led us to pick up a Tasco rimfire scope with an adjustable objective for our eldest daughter's Ruger American Rimfire.
Aim point was for the base of the neck as much as possible since the head bobs around on a walking chicken, but the base remains relatively stable.
Any standard velocity match grade ammunition which shoots well in your rifle would be our choice. We ran Federal Gold Medal Match I believe it was called - was something north of $15 CDN for 50, but my goodness did the Brno like that stuff!
There was very little bloodshot meat with that type of round even if the wing butts were hit on the neck shot. Much less time to clean up than any shotgun hit birds in our experience.
Hopefully that was useful information for you or someone out there. All the best to you as we head into spring.
Dwayne
