I don’t have any scholarly wisdom to add to this discussion, but I’ve broken thousands upon thousands of clays with a .410 and killed a ton of birds with a .410. I’m lucky in that I get to do a LOT of wingshooting each year over my pointy dogs in various wonderful places and for various species (including everything from wild birds in remote places to game farm birds). Being a bit of a gun crank I shoot some birds each year with the .410.
I’m also lucky enough to have owned and shot a variety of .410’s – recoil operated autos, gas autos, box lock SxS’s, .410 O/U’s built on 20 gauge frames, a .410 O/U with pencil-thin bbls on on a heavy 12 gauge target gun frame; various .410 tube sets, and even an exquisite 4.5 lb. sidelock SxS game gun (that I could not shoot well at all).
For what little it is worth, here’s where I come down on the .410: It’s a challenging target gun. It’s a functional wingshooting gun, but MUST be used within its limitations, which I would call about 25 yards on big birds. I don’t use it for wild birds anymore because I don’t want to be subject to those limits when hunting wild birds.
After a lifetime of target shooting and wingshooting, I only own and use one .410 and, like Sam, the gun itself is the reason I enjoy the .410. I doubt I will ever own another .410. That special gun is a 1940’s vintage Model 42. I love taking that gun out to shoot targets or birds, although it may not be the “ideal” tool for either. But for the 42, I probably wouldn’t mess with the .410.
I like open chokes (I use IC mostly) because they allow you to take advantage of the .410’s only real forte – the ability to shoot quickly – without blowing birds to tatters and yet (admittedly illogically) open chokes don’t seem to reduce the further effective range of the gun. #7½ shot seems to work well – it gives adequate penetration on big birds out to the max effective range of the .410 and provides substantial thicker patterns than #6 shot.
I’ve been trying Jay Menefee’s (PolyWad) 3” Gram-Crak-R buffered ammo. I’ve only killed a few dozen birds with it so far, so I don’t have enough of a sample to know if that load is better than the Big Three loads, but it looks promising. I must shoot it a good bit more on game to speak definitively about it.
Bottom line: .410’s can be great fun and are ethical wingshooting tools when used within their limits.
