Waterfowl hunters should take a cue from turkey hunters. Every turkey hunter I know, before the season starts, will put up a turkey head and pattern and test his shotgun on it. He’ll shoot the gun and the load he wants to use in the turkey woods. He’ll check his pattern density, but guess what?
Waterfowl hunters need to do the same thing, with different loads, chokes, and guns. You need to take your shotgun with the load you expect to use, the choke you expect to use, and shoot it before the season starts to see what kind of pattern you’re getting.
I like to shoot a target at forty yards. I will take a range finder, and I’ll set up my target at forty yards. Then when I hunt, that is how far I set up my furthest decoy.
Once I get to that decoy spread and set the forty yard distance decoy, if I have a duck inside there, I know I have pattern density capable of downing that bird cleanly.
When patterning a gun, with a thirty-yard shot, the pattern should still be pretty uniform. I like to see anywhere from 6-12 pellets in that clean kill area of the head, chest, and neck area (6-inch area). Then, I like to see anywhere from 30-50 in the thirty-inch area of the target. (This is with a full choke on #2 steel.)
What this tells me is that I can go to the field with confidence that this gun, with this load, and choke are a vital combination. If I put it on the bird, it’s going to do its job. Confidence is a great thing when you’re hunting ducks. You need it! One of the ways to get it is shooting test patterns.
