Chuck
When I was living in Illinois I did alot of preserve hunting, pen-raised poultry. Some of the venues were pretty good, for instance the state of Illinois ran a concession where they just released birds and they'd get fairly wild pretty quick, still it was easy hunting, sort of like opening day pheasant hunting (and it only cost about $10 a bird). To make it more interesting I began using .410s, in fact I still have my .410 hammer gun. When I was consistently making most of my shots with the .410 I bought a true 36 gauge ML sxs; consistently hitting birds with that gun was a challenge. I still have the 36 gauge, but now I'm living in Texas where preserve hunting is big business and pretty much out of my price range (as would be a titanium barreled 12 gauge sxs). Estheticlly speaking I still like the smaller gauges, but when you hunt wild birds and maybe get just a few shots all day (like I was used to in Iowa) you appreciated the utility of the larger gauges.
Steve
PS for all the "410's are crippler guns" comments I found that in their range (under 30 yards) 410's killed quite efficiently, for the birds that went down wounded, my dog rounded them up quite quickly, they didn't suffer for long.
