Lots of opinions here so i may as well throw mine in too...

I come from a family of very serious hunters who hunted for food and sometimes it ment deer would be the only meat we would have... I've seen buck shot work many times, but if you just go out and buy some, you may not have good results...

I had an uncle who used nothing but buckshot, and i know for a fact he harvested over 100 deer with it and had no problem taking shots up to 80 yards with it. Over the years he lost very few deer using buckshot, but on longer shots he would have to track them down to find them dead...

Dad always said the secret to using buckshot was to make sure you aimed at the deer "where the neck meets the body"... This would put most of the pellets into the head, neck and lungs...

Both my dad and my uncle took great pains to pattern there shotguns with every brand of buckshot they could get there hands on, and would only use a shotgun that patterned it well... They then bought those shells and used them only in that shotgun...

Once Winchester came out with their buffered buckshot, the patterns improved quite a bit, and it became the shell to use...

I'm not much of a buckshot user, (although my girl friend shot a big doe with buckshot out of her 870 a couple weeks ago) but i know from watching my dad and uncle that it really does work, if you take the time to sort it all out, and use it right...

DM