Sep 27, 2024 4 min read

By Dave Bates

For the Observer-Reporter

In case you haven’t been reading closely of late, or haven’t been reading my column at all, the Washington Gun Show was last weekend. This week’s mission at the show is shotgun-based. My mentor, Chuck, gave me an intensive lesson on Parker shotguns and why my wife wouldn’t really mind me coming home with a $30,000 side-by-side, that costs more than my truck, to drag through the briars.

I could almost begin preparing some sort of deranged argument to defend such a platform if I hadn’t first gotten lost in another, even more baseless, conversation with my shotgun buddies. Why is it that in Africa, the safari crowd is fond of saying, “Use enough gun,”? Go big or go home. Never let a cape buffalo stomp your guts out because you failed to bring enough caliber to the dinner table. I guess it’s because they are hunting stuff that will kill them if they miss or misplace the shot.

In the gentlemanly shotgun societies of Washington and Greene Counties, it is quite the opposite. I spent 20 minutes fondling a ridiculously priced .410 that is practically worthless when it comes to bringing down pheasants or other large avian types in the field. Oh, I get it. There is some shotgun aficionado out there crying fowl (get it?) that a .410 is just the medicine for every bird in Pennsylvania, plus condors and pterodactyls. I’m not denying that it can be done. I’m just saying that it’s probably not the best tool in the shed for the job. And it’s not likely in my journeyman hands.

So the boil down from the lesson is how small is too small?

In my early days, the 12-gauge was the threshold to the doorway of manhood. Youngsters were almost always issued the .410 at the outset of their hunting careers. A little ways down the road, the .410 gave way to the 20-gauge. Later, maybe a 16 took its place until the final stage of the game, when we grew into manhood and adopted the 12-bore as our gauge of the age. Ironically, that lasted until we learned to shoot a shotgun and realized that a 12-gauge is complete overkill, pardon the pun. We discovered that a 16 is built on a smaller frame and carries lighter. Double that (the puns are coming faster than I can count) for the little 20 gauges that I am so fond of. When it comes to all day slogs for pheasant, grouse and woodcock, precious ounces and pounds add up. On an all day hunt the weight-to-gauge ratio is most noticeable.

So what’s a shotgun guy to do? Easy. Use as little gun as you can shoot effectively and still take game cleanly.

I am biased. The 20-gauge is my go-to gun these days. Having watched my buddy Mario break sporting clays at distance with his 20-gauge that others were missing with 12 gauges, I was made a believer. Phil Stoneking has been killing every bird known to mankind with his little 20-gauge Remington auto loader since long before I met him 25 years ago. My buddy, Bob Greenlee, uses nothing but and has no problem embarrassing me in the pheasant fields with his 20. Last year, I took my little 20 to a quail shoot and found it delightfully effective. For my money, the Goldilocks answer to “just right” is 20 gauge.

But just for argument’s sake, I still take my little 28-gauge out for grouse and woodcock or the occasional bunny hunt. It is plenty of medicine for light-skinned game at shorter distances but is still a compromise. If you can shoot it and it works for you, I applaud your choice. As for me, “Long live the 20-gauge!”

Dave Bates writes a weekly outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter. He can be reached at alphaomegashootingsolutions@gmail.com