Rimfire artist,

Liked what you had to say on pellet penetration and shotgun shooting in general. Liked the explanation on non plated lead shot setback and fliers.

One comment had me grinning: "very few people who do not shoot at least 20K sporting clays targets every year are good wing shots"

I have several friends and myself that are excellent wing shots and we don't shoot at clays at all. I suppose one could say "well you don't have pheasants in Az so this is different". We do have several species of doves, pigeons and three species of quail and all are much faster than pheasants.

I have been shooting game birds for over 40 years and I do quite well for a guy who doesn't shoot clay birds. Anyone who has hunted Gambels quail will tell you they are very fast and don't give you the transitional mode from rise to flight like a pheasant. Gambels don't rise they blast off.

I will say to field shooters that they need to try different chokes, shot sizes and shot weights to get a handle on what works for the type of bird hunted with their particular shotgun.

FYI for those that may be interested, through trial and error I only use a cylinder choke with 1 oz of #8s from a 20 gauge for mearns quail hunted with pointing dogs. I get doubles on the covey rise frequently, not bad for a guy who doesn't shoot clay birds AT ALL.

Mearns hunting at its best:
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