Thinking of a 410 and those hellishly expensive tungsten cartridges then shooting for food at sitting birds starts to make some sense. The same holds for single shot muzzle loaders and air weapons. Personally I hunt only what I like to eat, at numbers that will be eaten and not shoved in the freezer. never what offers "challenging"shots.
From what I read and from seeing paintings of hunters in the flintlock period, ground slucing was probably the way to hunt back then. Shooting flying"" was a later development. Using nets with setters was a form of ground slucing, since it involved sitting birds, and was probably more deadly than shooting, yet considered "sporting".
