My interest in this subject is purely out of nostalgia & accademic curiosity. You guys are a lot more experienced with hunting & shooting than I will ever be - I fired my fist center fire rifle at the age of 37.....& before that I shot one Muntjack with an Eley LG. The rest were shot with No 1 & No 2 shot - sometimes on the run, in close spaced tea bushes on the plantation which I managed in the early 1980's.

I grew up in India where in the last 40 years almost 99%(?) of all hunting has been done with shotguns (including muzzle loading shot guns used by local villagers). Eley LGs (000 buck) & SGs (00 buck) were the most commonly used big game loads. Some round ball & Brenneke slugs were used. Conical ball & Lethal Ball were less commonly used in the 1950's & before. American ammo was less common. I have been on beat shoots in the 1970s where chittal deer, Sambar deer & wild boar have been shot at up to 50 yards with LGs. I know that my dad used them on all kinds of big game in the 50's. Many, many tigers were shot in India for over 50 years with LGs. Of course we have no idea how many animals were wounded. The older shotgun ammo did not have shot cups but had felt & carboard wads. I once shot a village cow that was suspected of having contracted rabies - I used an LG load by removing No4 shot in a 2.5 inch paper cartridge & replacing with 6 LG pellets & roll crimping it with a hand tool (I still have the tool but have not used it for 20 years). Even at 5 yards - the shot spread 2 inches on the forehead of the cow & the slugs reached the neck / throat as blood hosed out like a fountain from the forehead. The cow was burried in a deep pit as the superstitions about rabies in the villages is a complex issue.

So why do we not get buckshot today that can penetrate & kill large game at 25 yards even with 3" spreads? Is it the softer lead used or the spread is too close & the shots are getting deformed before they hit the animal? If we can "re-discover" big, fat & slow bullets at 2100fps to 2400 fps, then how about re-discovring the old buck shots?