I believe just looking at shot size alone ignores too many other factors. I rarely shoot birds with shot larger than #8 and kill just as many and just as well with #9. Payload, choking and range seem to be left out of the post when I hear people talking about a bird rattling like a bag of marbles because it is so full of shot. I rarely find more than one or two pellet holes in the breasts of the birds I shoot. I'm not saying what works for me will work for you, but I am certain that it works for me, which makes the "shot that small is never a good choice" mantra asinine to those that know better. Too much tossing around blanket statements from people with either not much experience or experience under different conditions. If you go back to the turn of the twentieth century or before size 9 or 10 shot was commonly used. To say that is never a good idea is telling some people that shot tens of thousands of birds, one of which I know averaged over 100 birds per day for a period of two decades, that they didn't know what they were doing.
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