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Your load appears to be a hot one. Velocity has to be above 1250 FPS and probably is over 1300 FPS. Inside 35 yards, an ounce of #6 will have enough density to reliably hit the birds with enough pellets to kill them. Beyond that, more pellets are needed in the pattern to fill up the holes. #7 shot will do this. Another factor at work here (I'm assuming) is that incoming driven birds will present a head/neck target far more often than flushed outgoing birds.

Another factor are the bird themselves. Are not most of your birds pen raised and stocked over on the other side of the pond? We have a similar situation here in New England. Most of the pheasant hunting areas are managed by the individual states or by by private organizations of sportsmen in cooperation with the state. These areas are stocked for put and take hunting.

Freshly released pen raised birds are a darn sight more "tender" than wild born birds or holdover survivers. I can kill most stocked birds with #7 shot easily enough, especially over dogs. I've often used 7/8 ounces of #7 at 1275 FPS out of a 28 gauge to dump them cleanly. I use a one ounce 28 ga "magnum" load #6 shot as a second round to dump the ones that get out a bit further than 30 or 35 yards.

I've also killed stocked birds out further than 40 yards with #7 shot and out at 50 with the #6 round, if I have an angle on them--not always though. I've had my share of straight aways fly off to be followed up with the dog.

I've also used a 16 gauge 7/8 ounce load of #7 shot pushed to 1350+ FPS. Out to 30 yards, it will slam birds out of the air with noticably more killing power than a 28 gauge load will. However, past 35 yards, the power drops off quickly and noticably.

I'd wager you could dump birds with #9 skeet shot if you center the head/neck area. I've done a few just like that with a 1/2 ounce .410 skeet load at a club nearby where they stock birds in the fall and shoot skeet on Saturdays. I've been present when the members have taken some for an inpromtu Saturday afternoon barbeque, and have been allowed to whack a few for the platter myself. The birds are not wild and will hold until you darn near step on them. They flush high and present their head/neck area for easy kills.

Killing a bird from butt to beak is tougher, a lot tougher. It is an entirely different matter to push shot through the bird from stern to stem. It requires bigger shot. #7 will not do it cleanly unless the bird is hit in the back of the head and neck from behind by part of the pattern. If the bird comes down with its head up, you are in trouble as often as not. It will run--sometimes it will run an astonishing distance at an astonishing pace. Only a very savvy dog with a good nose is going to make the difference here. Be prepared to sprint along behind the dog or that "dead" bird will outrun you both. Unload the gun please. Very Happy

You can load back up once the bird is pinned or has slowed down enough to be approached. This kind of shenanigans is now hard on an old man like me. So I try to "limit the fun" by using more gun and bigger shot loads of bigger shot. With age comes wisdom--mostly out of sheer necessity and lack of wind too. Rolling Eyes

I tend to move up to a 16 and a faster stepping 1 ounce load of #6 shot and 1-1/8 ounces of #5 shot and tighter chokes later in the season. The birds wise up as the season progresses. They will not hold as well, and they tend to flush flatter, faster, further out and straight away for parts unknown. On the tough, cold, windy days, I'll resort to 1-1/4 ounces of #4 shot to kill the more fully plummaged late season roosters out at 40+ yards when they decide all too quickly to fly flat and far rather than hang around and let another pesty dog sniff their butts again.

Wild birds are totally different than stocked birds. This is true for survivors of the first season as well. They are often bigger and tougher to kill, quicker to run, and flush wild far more often. They also fly much flatter if they can. The only time these birds tower is to clear a stand of trees. Out on the fens, tress are scarce. the birds fly flat and fast. We have our share of fens and open wetlands around my locale in Southeastern Mass. We also have our own wild bird population plus a bunch of holdovers in the more open swamps and in the coastal riparian areas. These birds take decidedly more thump to put them down for keeps.

It is the same in the Midwest for wild birds. I've had the chance to hunt in South Dakota after the season has been open for a couple of weeks. The young and the stupid are long dead by then. The survivors want no part of your dog's cold nose in their 6. They just will not tolerate it and flush all too quickly for #7 shot. The only driven birds I saw were the dead ones in the back of someone's SUV. None were mine. I came to the party undergunned with ineffective loads. I got some bad advice and did not consult my own intelligence to the contrary. Early season dummies my flat old fanny. Laughing

Pheasant are smart and very adaptable. Wild pheasant at tough as thugs. They have to be. Everything with talons, claws, and teeth like to eat them--including us humans. We cheat. We use guns. Even so, the birds will outwit us if we let them. Knowing how to take them on their terms is the best way to get them. Having an array of tools to do so helps. Using different sizes and amounts of shot fills out our tool pouches so to speak.

Joined: 01 Feb 2009 Posts: 64 Location: UK

Charles -

My French side-by-side was made for (not by, I suspect) an "arquebusier" in the Rue Lafayette, Paris; it’s a fairly plain non-ejector, English style, with a Greener top-bolt. I paid the sterling equivalent of $70 for it about 10 years ago, which is more or less what it’s worth now. Continental side-by-sides are greatly undervalued over here, and 16s are unpopular because the ammunition is expensive and hard to find. The best deals are for German 16 bores - cheek-pieces, carved rather than engraved actions, horn trigger-guards; they’re beautiful guns, but you can’t give them away. Well, you can; I gave one away about 10 years ago. Not the biggest mistake I ever made, but somewhere in the top 20.

16gaugeguy -

I’m very interested in what you have to say about the difference between reared and wild pheasants, tho’ I have to say it’s not borne out by my experience. I always examine the spurs of the cock pheasants I shoot, to see if they’re this year’s or last year’s bird; my conclusion is that very few birds make it through the summer (off season) over here. Understandably; the biggest killer of pheasants in the UK is the motor car, followed by the fox, with shooters coming a poor third. Older birds tend to be harder to get off the ground and fly lower - natural selection at work, I guess - but don’t seem noticeably harder to kill.

Because we tend to shoot in groups rather than hunt solo, for safety reasons we only tend to shoot birds flying over our heads; which means most birds are shot from underneath, where their feather armour is most vulnerable; even birds going away tend to get hit in the head or breast. 7s have no trouble killing cleanly even at extreme range, say 50 yards; most of the birds I skin and eat have pellet-holes clean through the body, with the pellet lodged in the skin on the exit side. Pattern, in other words, fails before penetration; I find 6s inadequate because there are fewer pellets, the pattern is more sparse, and you’re likely to get just one hit rather than 2 or 3. If that one pellet breaks a wing, at least you’ve got a chance of retrieving the bird on the ground, if the dog’s up to the job; a bird gutshot with one pellet of #6 will wobble in the air but fly on.

Only the big, grand, murderously expensive pheasant shooting estates shoot exclusively driven birds, with the majority of shots being incoming. The vast majority of us shoot “rough”, a combination of incoming, going-away and crossing birds put up by dogs blundering about in woods, hedges and winter crops such as kale and fodder maize. For what it’s worth; the syndicate I belong to consists of a dozen shooters, and an average of a bird each counts as a pretty good day.

One of the reasons I changed from 12 bore to 16, and from 6 to 7, is that I found I was shooting many, many more birds dead in the air with the 16 gauge and 7s. Maybe this is because the gun fits me better or is better suited to my physique, I don’t know; on balance, I’m inclined to believe it’s because the 16, with 1oz of 7, is ballistically superior for this particular kind of shooting. I hit more clays with the 12 than the 16, for what that's worth.

Interestingly, I find the 16 and 7s a very effective killer of rooks and crows (a major crop pest over here); most shots are at extreme range; I hardly ever use the right barrel. But I use a 12 gauge and 6s for rabbits, pigeons and duck, because I have trouble killing these cleanly with a 16; all of these I tend to shoot at 25-35 yards.

My Unique/Herco loads don’t seem particularly hot; there’s considerably less felt recoil than with factory loads (15/16 oz), for example. Please bear in mind that I use fibre wads rather than plastic.

I don’t know much about the different sub-varieties of pheasant; but I was told that the big shoots cross-breed the domestic British pheasant with an American variety (Montana Blue, if that means anything to anybody) because they get up more readily and fly higher; the downside being that they tend to stray more. Small syndicates like ours prefer the old-fashioned British variety, which flies lower, stays on the ground if it possibly can, but isn’t so likely to wander off onto somebody else’s land.