Oh, I hunted with a 28-gauge along the way but came away wanting more when pheasants flushed far ahead. Sub gauges are the way to go for upland shotguns. Plus, many of the new non-toxic shotshells, like Kent’s bismuth loads, are safe to shoot in fixed-choke shotguns “so we think a lot of guns got brought out of the safe and into the field in recent years,” Barry said. It appeared the 16-gauge and other now-called sub-gauges were staging a comeback, spurred by new interest fed as much as anything by improvements in shotshells that give the smaller gauges improved downrange performance and lethality. In 2012 I took note when Browning brought out their newly designed A5 and nodded in approval when they introduced the Sweet 16 version, which “put some life in the 16-gauge,” according to Jeff Barry of Kent Cartridge Company. It took years but things started to change. Like many, I had written off 16-gauge as a relic, there not being many – or any – choices in 16-gauge shotguns or ammunition in the hardware stores that were our main source of sporting arms and ammunition. Back in junior-high days when we hunted pheasants, my buddy, Pat, carried a hand-me-down bolt-action 16-gauge with worn wooden stock but I never gave it much thought, carrying my brother’s 20-gauge pump until I, skipping over 16-gauge, got my own 12-gauge double-barrel.
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