Hevi Steel - opinions please

[M.T. Pockets]

I just got back and shot a few rounds of everything. To summarize it, I was impressed with the Hevi Steel. It is noticably better than any steel I have ever used. It has more range and kills more efficiently. We shot a lot of geese with it and the biggest difference I noticed was that there were very few birds that weren't dead in the air.

I was shooting geese with 3" #2 Hevi Steel. A couple of my buddies were shooting 3 1/2" B's. It was evident they had more range, they were killing geese dead in the air that I haven't seen since the days of lead. I just didn't shoot at birds as far as they did.

One observation, large Canada geese, those in the 12 lb. range, are much harder to kill in the air than your standard 7-8 lb. Canada and substantially harder to kill than snows & blues and specklebellies. I would suggest BB's or larger for all Canadas under all conditions, including when they want to land in your decoys. After a shot or two in the wind they can be going down and a long ways out and hard to get another round into. We shot over 30 snow geese and all but 1 or 2 were dead in the air, and this was at some long ranges. The Canadas were closer, (but still not close) and we were chasing some of them.

I shot a some ducks with the 3" #2 Hevi Shot and it had noticable more killing power than any other steel shot I've used. It killed them very dead in the air. With the standard steel loads I've used in the past I've had to chase many ducks.

I also tried some Remington HD in 3" #2 shot. I really couldn't see a noticable difference in the 3 days I was using it. I tried using the HD rounds as the third round in the gun so when a flock came in it would be my last shot, but if the first two rounds in Hevi Steel didn't get them, they were a tough shot by round #3. I'm sure the HD is great stuff, but for this hunter, I'm satisfied with Hevi Steel.