Guy that introduced me to pheasant hunting always used 3” 12ga #5s in a 28” 1187. He always said that those loads would kill quail just fine and I saw him do it plenty of times. Not something I normally do but he was a one load kind of guy in pheasant country.
This was dogma in NW Iowa when I was a kid (60’s) — magnum shells, larger shot, 30” barrels choked full were the real pheasant guns. I Started out with a full choke H&R 16 ga and then came a Stevens 20 ga SxS ( probably mod/full) and I began to realize it wasn’t true as I was regularly putting birds down. Even with the mod choked barrel. I realized then that most of these older guys were not real upland hunters and hunted pheasants once, twice a year, mostly out of tradition and weren’t particularly good shots which began to explain how tough pheasants were. 😉
