7 1/2 Wonder

B

Bella

New member
I went hunting this and bagged a few quail. I was using 7 1/2 shot.

I realize that birds, espically quail sized ones, are light, fragile creatures. But you still wonder how such a small piece of lead could drop one. You hold a small shotshell pellet in you hand and you wonder how it can hurt anything.

Its just something I have always wondered about.
 
I knew the answer when I shot one last month. Blew the head clean off. I could have swore it was bigger and farther away but I was wrong.

Good job hunting those little birds down. I used 6 shot since I was pheasant hunting and the quail probably thought it was a slug.
 
Also when you clean the birds you don't always find any apparent trauma. You wonder how the bird died.
 
Also when you clean the birds you don't always find any apparent trauma.
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I think it literally scares some of them to death, although you might miss seeing a single pellet to the head
 
pattern v. penetration

There's an old shotgun phrase that goes...."pattern will fail before penetration"...meaning you will get a thinner, less effective pattern on most winged critters and small game, before a pellet loses the ability to penetrate to a depth to be lethal. Exclude turkeys and geese I suppose. And steel shot.

Though you get a "golden BB" now and again that spines or brains a critter, it is usually multiple strikes and trauma that does in small game. I became a fan of small pellets and open chokes, way back, shooting #6 lead at nearly everything including decoyed mallards (legal then). Dad and I shot a wagon load of cottontails with .410's, using the 3 inch shell and .....#7-1/2 shot.
 
While a 7 1/2 pellet may be small relative to your size, it is not small relative to a quail. A 7 1/2 size shot hitting a quail in the head would be similar to a .38 caliber projectile hitting you in the head.
 
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