Mr. trblig1958,
You are dead wrong about steel shot. I was the one of the biggest opponents of the steel shot mandate when it came into effect many years ago. I wrote the U.S.F.& W.S. to protest their proposed (at that time) mandate. The steel shot available back then was awful, it crippled almost as many as it killed dead. I refused to use it for a long, long time. But, the stuff out there now is deadly. The combination of improved shot cups, powders, higher velocity and improved shot, in some cases, have made the newer loads all that most gunners need for modern guns. Now, you may be the next Nash Buckingham when it comes to killing ducks and geese at extreme ranges, I don't know, but if you shoot ducks at all, and shoot them at ranges under sixty yards, the better quality steel loads available give up nothing.
I'm not talking from my armchair, either. I just read back through my journal and I read that for the last 39 ducks, and two geese, they were all killed with steel, and that with NO CRIPPLES. Not one bird lost wounded. That is not conjecture, treblig, that is fact.
