The MeatEater

Selecting the right shotshell for ducks, geese, and pheasants can be a daunting task. Not only are there numerous options to choose from, but there’s also considerable misinformation or “marketing speak” that can mislead hunters.

One of the best shotshell selection resources for waterfowl and upland hunters is Tom Roster’s non-toxic lethality chart. Roster is a ballistics expert who has extensively tested shotshells for decades. I don’t have the credentials of Roster, but I have hunted with (and patterned) a wider variety of shotshells than most over the last 20 years. Here’s what I have found works best.

A majority of the shotguns I have tested pattern well out to 35 yards, which is to say they are lethal at this distance on waterfowl and pheasants. For ducks, steel No. 3s and 4s paired with an improved cylinder choke are deadly. The same is true for pheasants, but if you’re shooting lead on roosters, No. 5s are best. Bismuth No. 5s are perfect for ducks and pheasants within 35 yards. Steel BBs are my go-to for large Canada geese, and steel No. 2s are best for lesser Canada geese, specklebellies, and snow geese.

Assuming your shotgun patterns properly at this range (I have seen a lot of shotgun, choke, and load combinations deplete rapidly at 40 yards and beyond), steel No. 2s and bismuth No. 4s work well for ducks and pheasants. Large Canada geese need steel BBBs, and BBs are good for mid-sized geese (lesser Canadas, specks, and snows). Bismuth 4s will lethally penetrate ducks and pheasants, and lead 4s are my recommendation for ringnecks if you’re using that shot type. Step up to a modified or improved modified choke at this distance.

Ethical shooting beyond 45 yards requires careful pattern testing to determine the optimal choke/load combination at that distance. Determining the proper lead is also challenging. You need to practice in the offseason with the choke and load you plan to use, shooting sporting clays or five-stand, where shots are typically longer than on the skeet or trap field. I cap shooting distance at 60 yards, except on rare occasions when a mallard or goose is flying directly above the blind, exposing its underbelly, which houses the vital organs.

Excluding tungsten super shot (TSS), Hevi-Shot, a mixture of tungsten, nickel, and iron with a density of 12 g/cc, is the ideal non-toxic offering for 45 to 60 yards. I’ve seen great results with Hevi-Shot 2s and 4s on ducks and pheasants. For large Canada and mid-sized geese, BBs are best, but Hevi-Shot doesn’t produce such a shell, so you would have to source the pellets and handload them. If that doesn’t interest you, the Hevi-Shot No. 2s are suitable for mid-sized geese, but I would recommend BBB steel or upgrading to TSS if you’re targeting big honkers.

Steel No. 2s are sufficient for ducks and pheasants, and No. 4 lead is a good choice for upland hunters. If you want to shoot bismuth on ducks or geese, use a buffered load of No. 4s. Without a buffer, bismuth fractures. Buffering helps maintain consistent patterns, which is crucial at longer distances. Use buffered BBs for geese. Modified, improved modified, and full chokes will produce the best patterns.

Due to its density (18g/cc), TSS is often regarded by many as the ultimate bird killer, and it is at a distance or if you are shooting a stationary target, like turkeys. Inside 40 yards, choke doesn’t have a significant effect on TSS patterns. Of course, if you pattern TSS with a cylinder bore choke and then a .760 constricted turkey choke at 40 yards, the cylinder pattern will be more open than the .760. But the difference is not as big as you might think, which makes it challenging to kill a passing mallard because you aren’t casting a very wide shot string.

For waterfowl, I reserve TSS (Nos. 7.5, 8, or 9 shot) for late-season field hunts on big honkers. Canada geese are typically more wary this time of year and apt to skirt the edges of the decoys, requiring longer shots. Geese have also developed a thick coat of down feathers and a layer of fat over their breastplate. TSS can efficiently penetrate both those barriers.

TSS is also a good option if you draw a coveted swan tag or are targeting sea ducks, which are hardy birds. At $6 (or more per shell), TSS is an expensive choice for the average duck hunt. And you’re wasting money if the shots are inside 40 yards, because there are far cheaper options that produce wider patterns, giving you a better opportunity to harvest birds.

Some shotshell manufacturers have increased muzzle velocities to give hunters the illusion that speed is a decisive factor in killing ducks and other gamebirds. Pattern and field tests have shown otherwise. Too much shotshell accelerant (gun powder) has proven to produce blown patterns. I’ve patterned steel loads that exceeded 1,500 feet per second (fps), with mixed results. Sometimes the core of the pattern and its overall density were on point. But too often, there were only a few dozen pellets (or fewer) inside the industry standard 30-inch circle at 40 yards.

Ballistics experts widely regard the ideal shotshell muzzle velocity as falling between 1,200 and 1,400 fps. That range not only creates better patterns, but it will also make you a better shot. An increase in the amount of accelerant always results in more recoil. That leads to flinching and lifting your head from the stock. Not a great recipe for connecting with passing birds at any distance.

Stacking different-sized shot and shot types inside the same shotshell has become popular, but it can be confusing for consumers. The best way to navigate steel duplex loads is to use the distance guides I laid out for shooting waterfowl and pheasants for ranges of 35 yards, 35 to 45 yards, and beyond 45 yards. However, stacked loads of steel paired with bismuth or tungsten require a bit more nuance. Let’s run through a few examples.

First up, a steel No. 2 and No. 4 duplex shotshell. The benefit of such a load is that you have larger No. 2 pellets that can kill a duck at 45 yards, mixed with No. 4s, which theoretically will put more pellets inside a 30” circle at 40 yards than a standard No. 2 shotshell. But there is always a tradeoff. If you need to shoot a duck beyond 45 yards, you will have fewer No. 2s in your shot string than a straight load of No. 2s (assuming the two shells have the same payload weight), and you won’t get as much pattern density inside 35 yards as you would with a conventional steel No. 4.

The steel-bismuth duplex offerings have begun to wane, as there is not a huge difference in pellet density between the two shot types to warrant the increased price per shell. Steel shot has a density of 7.8 g/cc, and bismuth is at 9.6 g/cc; therefore, with the small amount of bismuth stacked inside the shotshell, you’re not getting much, if any, added performance.

Pattern work has shown that some of the steel-tungsten duplex loads produce outstanding patterns inside a 30” circle at 40 yards. For instance, I range tested and hunted with a No. 2 steel/7.5 TSS load. It performed beautifully, placing between 25 to 40 more pellets inside the 30” circle than a standard load of No. 2 steel. Plus, it killed ducks clean.

At the same time, the core of the steel-tungsten pattern was ultra-dense, which was to be expected because tungsten patterns are tighter than any other shot type. You do get more pellets inside the 30” circle, which is always a good thing, but you also have to be precise with your shot placement to take advantage of the tungsten shot. Additionally, the cost for a box of 25 shells is nearly $60, compared to about $25 for a box of steel No. 2s.

Steven Rinella talks with author Mark Lee Gardner, Brody Henderson, Randall Williams, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. 

Topics discussed: Mark Lee Gardner's brand new book: Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone; having a deep love for estate sales and rare books; insights into cowboy hats; being the author of interpretive guides for National Park historic sites; Old West cliches; “I’ll be your huckleberry”; the friendship between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday; a brothel on a boat; Steve’s celiac theory; drifters; outlaws and lawmen; robbing trains; a play-by-play of the OK Corral gun fight; a performance by Mark on banjo; and much more.

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This week Cal talks about cat-proofing your windshield, extinction-proofing your native birds, and trophy elk decline theory.

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I can’t run trail cameras in a lot of the places I hunt. I love that, but I also love running a whole bunch of cameras to try to decipher deer movement from year to year on specific properties. This latter tactic was a big part of my fall this year, and I noticed something that has led me to more questions than answers.

On the surface, this is not the best reflection on cameras in general. After all, shouldn’t they just tell us where and when deer move, and we can call that good enough? Well, they do that. But they also clue us into things that might be beyond our understanding when it comes to deer behavior.

The most obvious of these in my life, I’ve just started calling whitetail parties. And honestly, I have no real idea why they happen.

In northern Wisconsin, I own a 30-acre property and have access to another piece of private that consists of 120 acres. This year, just because I could, I ran five cameras on each parcel.

Keep in mind this is in a low deer density area, and although the properties are about 15 miles apart, movement trends on one are almost always reflected on the other. And most of the time, that movement sucks.

But while I was in Nebraska this year, my cameras were very busy in Wisconsin. There’s no surprise there, since it was the first week of November. By the time I got home and drove across the river to salvage the rut in Packer territory, my cameras had gone cold again.

And by cold, I mean literally no daylight pictures on any camera for multiple days in a row. My hunting reflected that, even though I managed to stumble into a good one after not seeing a deer for four days.

What was really curious to me was that a few days after I drove home, I had another day where my cameras lit up. All day long, on both properties, bucks and does walked in front of my cameras. I think you could have killed a deer off of every stand and blind I have on the two properties, which is saying something. The following two days, I had one doe in daylight on 10 cameras.

Now, you might be thinking that this is easily explainable, but I don’t think so.

Look, cold fronts get deer moving, and some wind is better than no wind. The rut is a huge factor. We know all of this stuff, and plenty of people go even deeper with the belief that the moon phase is a big driver.

Why days happen when the deer just seem to move might be tied to any one of these factors, or more likely several, but I think it’s something else. I see deer parties on my cameras in September, October, November, and December. In weather you’d expect them, and weather that isn’t any different from any other day in a long stretch of time. It’s never isolated to just one property, and sometimes happens in different states.

I don’t know what it means, honestly. But I do know that it has changed how I hunt.

If you could figure out exactly when most of the deer were most likely to move all day long, and predict it with some level of accuracy, you could go yacht shopping pretty quickly. There are a lot of people, and increasingly, a lot of technology, that promise just that. But again, if it were true, and the secret was something that could be shared for money, none of us would worry too hard about stringing together a bunch of low- or no-activity sits.

How I look at this is simpler—I know that those days exist, even if I can’t really tell you why. Even during the rut, I’ve sat through a hell of a lot of really boring days, so it’s not something that is easily solvable, even when it should be.

Instead, I try to string together a block of days to sit whenever I can. Instead of just looking at the forecast and deciding that the upcoming cold front is the best chance to climb into a stand for the evening, I try to block off at least a couple of days at a time.

I know that not everyone can do that, but three or four days of hard hunting in a row gives you a chance to catch one of those magic days. I don’t know how to put it any other way. I wish I had a better strategy to offer up, but the truth is, a lot of trail camera usage has led me to believe that patience and time on stand is what it will take for me to eventually have one of those days where your head is on a swivel because the deer just keep showing up.

It’s a confidence thing, even if it can’t be drilled down precisely. You can get pretty close, and that’s good enough to have a hell of a lot of fun out there, and eventually, fill a tag. It’s also the antidote to the current hunting mindset of waiting out for perfect conditions to hunt, which is a recipe for unfilled tags. I’d rather dedicate myself to a few blocks of time where I might capture whitetail lightning in a bottle than try to cherry-pick a few hours that might produce for me but probably won’t.

A social media influencer with a history of unscrupulous wildlife-related behavior is under new scrutiny for falsifying her residency to hunt big game in the Cowboy State.

The woman, Samantha Strable, gained notoriety earlier this year for grabbing a baby wombat off the side of the road in Australia—a move that brought on a slew of public outlash from her social media followers. In the now-deleted video, she snatches the animal and runs back to her car with the mother in pursuit. She holds the squirming wombat for about a minute, then lets it go back into the roadside ditch.

In addition to local backlash, the incident brought to light other wildlife crimes that Strable may have committed in the last several years as well. This summer, Wyoming Game & Fish Department (WGFD) received an anonymous tip that Strable was purchasing big-game tags in Wyoming, despite not having lived in the state for several years.

To qualify for resident licenses in Wyoming, an individual must reside in the state for one year, and cannot leave for more than 180 days in a calendar year. An investigation conducted by WGFD Warden Jacob Miller found Strable to have allegedly been in violation of all these statutes.

According to an affidavit obtained by a local news outlet, Cowboy State Daily, Warden Miller discovered that Strable held an Alaska driver’s license and had been working and living in Australia, Alaska, Montana, and North Dakota between 2023 and 2025, spending only a few weeks a year in Wyoming.

In fact, Strable admitted as much in a separate 2023 interview with the Cowboy State Daily, which was published at the time to showcase the young hunter’s accomplishments. Strable told the reporter that she worked as a seasonal wildlife technician in Wyoming during the summers, but took off to travel, work, and hunt in other countries during the off-season.

“I can’t stand the six-month winters, so I head to the Southern Hemisphere in November or December,” she said. She reported having hunted red stag in Chile; wallabies, chamois, Himalayan tahr, and wild pigs in New Zealand. On the pig hunt, she said, her team used dogs to corner the animals and knives mounted to long sticks to kill them by hand.

None of these exploits, however, stopped Strable from claiming Wyoming residency and killing a handful of animals every fall before taking off for greener pastures. In 2024, she drew resident elk and antelope tags and filled both. In early 2025, she also killed a mountain lion and purchased a resident black bear license. In August—on the same day the anonymous tip was received—she bought a Wyoming resident general elk tag, but used a Montana mailing address.

On November 21, following Warden Miller’s investigation, Strable was booked into Sublette County Jail and charged with eight misdemeanors, including counts of poaching wildlife, false swearing under oath, and hunting a wilderness area as a nonresident without a guide (a privilege reserved for residents in Wyoming).

In the time since Strable’s misconduct has come to light, she has deleted all her social media accounts. Reportedly, she had around 95,000 followers and was known for posting about her fishing and hunting trips, including the illegal Wyoming hunts. The posts, however, beginning with the wombat video, are probably what got her in trouble to begin with.

After filming the notorious video in Australia, an online petition calling for her deportation received about 48,000 signatures, and the Australian Minister of Home Affairs said he was investigating whether her visa could be revoked. Strable left Australia on her own accord before that could happen. However, her reputation may have preceded her back to Wyoming, leading to the anonymous tip regarding her questionable residency status.

If convicted of the charges being pressed, Strable could face several thousand dollars in fines and potentially prison time. False swearing in Wyoming carries a fine of up to $10,000, illegally hunting wilderness areas as a nonresident is punishable by up to $1,000, and the poaching charges carry up to a $10,000 fine and a revoked hunting license. As always, those charged with wildlife crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

To say the least, it’s a turn of events for someone who, at one point, looked to be leading the next generation of hunters and conservationists. Strable’s Southern Hemisphere trips might be on pause for a couple of years to come.

Feature image via Samantha Strable’s Facebook Page.

Steven Rinella talks with Ryan Callaghan, Spencer Neuharth, Randall Williams, and Cory Calkins.

Topics discussed: Cal's AK grizzly; the new CEO of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers; our newest true crime podcast "Blood Trails" and why you oughta keep your eyes pealed in the woods; a dude poaching deer on prison grounds; baiting with a medium-sized deer; self turn-ins; foul tasting salt water estuary ducks; how you can't get "almost-charged," deferring to Tony Peterson while deer hunting in Nebraska; and more. 

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Brent's making good his promise to take us on a tour of his new Stor-Mor studio. While the building itself is enough to talk about, in this episode he shifts the focus to the contents. The items inside are more than mere decorations, they're mementos representing people and places that he holds dear. After he tells the story of his first attempt at having a place of his own, he enlightens us with his description of his new one.

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In this episode of In Pursuit, Rich Froning sits down with Scott and Byrd to catch up on the past few weeks of hunting, training, and time in the Tennessee woods. They share the moments that stood out most. Bird guiding his family into some great deer. Rich taking his kids out for their own first experiences. The small, quiet parts of a hunt that remind you why the outdoors matters.

They also look back at their conversation with former NFL lineman and jiu-jitsu competitor John Welbourn and talk through what they learned about training with purpose, understanding backcountry demands, and why having a clear goal changes the way you prepare.

From big woods to backyard ridge lines, this episode is a reminder that the pursuit is not about perfect timing or perfect conditions. It is about showing up, preparing well, and making memories with the people who matter most.

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