Snobbery! How an a guy who shoots Nitro Specials and other blue collar guns be a snob? I said that as I grow older and am often unable to walk, I choose my shots carefully. Nine out of ten guys can't handle an ounce of shot well enough inside 40 yards. I like the small gauge guns because I can still carry them. For years (when I was a pretty good shot) I shot a Flues 12 ga. with 7/8 loads and had no trouble within the 40 yards. Please, I have never said that I thought small bores were better than the larger ones. If you get to be 75, you'll know what I meant. I will not shoot a bird unless I am pretty sure to bag it. Chops
I suppose you could be a victim of "snobbery" but I kind of doubt it. Your kind of situation was not what I was attempting to address.
There is no doubt that lighter loads can be surprisingly effective to those of us who grew up with "the higher the brass, the better". There can also be obvious advantages to those of us (me, too!) who don't get around as spryly [Is this a word?] as we used to and/or who don't deal with recoil as well as we did when we were younger (ditto!).
I haven't gotten to be 75, yet. I'm working on it, though!
What I was commeting about were folks who seem to think that light guns, gauges, and loads are somehow "virtuous", in themselves, and that using "heavier" is somehow "unsporting", "gamehoggery" and/or "low class". In my experience, the category of shotgunners, in the U.S., who seem to be most prone to this tendency are quail hunters.
