Seems to be moving up...

[Lines]

This is an incredible story, eFish!
What a warm, peaceful start to this shift today!

Yes, I love to hunt.  My fire for it burns hotter as the wild hog population continues to grow.

About me:
I'm a hunter, shooter, handloader.  For myself, I handload .270 Winchester and .45 Auto.  Been a handloader over 13 years, but recently added shotshell handloading to the stash.
I'm a Constitutional Conservative, I consider myself a Patriot.
I prefer IMR, Vihtavuori, and some Hodgdon powders (do have a little Ramshot and Accurate), CCI and Federal primers.

I'm very serious about brass preparation and bullet construction/performance.  I know full-well that shot placement is king and bullet performance is queen, in humane taking of game animals.

I'm a fan of Douglas and Bartlein barrels.
My .277" rifle bullets consist of Barnes TTSX and LRX, Berger Classic Hunter, Woodleigh Weldcore, Lehigh Controlled Chaos (copper), Norma Oryx, and Sierra MatchKing.

I could talk about this all day 🤣

🇺🇸
I knew you were a good guy BKJ!
🇺🇸

[BareKnuckleJigs]

Many Thanks, Lines!

🇺🇸We The People🇺🇸

I know I'm in Good Company 🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Lines]

Hey efishnc, I never got into rifle or pistol reloading either. Did a bunch of my own trap loads that saved a little money. When I was young my dad bought some shotshell reloading supplies for our duck hunting passion on the Missouri river. 4 brothers, and myself spent many, many hours reloading 12 and 20 ga.  Wish life was that simple again.

[Lines]

Many Thanks, Lines!

🇺🇸We The People🇺🇸

I know I'm in Good Company 🇺🇸🇺🇸

Thanks man!

[BareKnuckleJigs]

Killer, eFish (if I may be allowed a small pun)!

I'm converting everything to steel.  I now have a MEC Steelmaster, 12 gauge, 2.75"/3" press.  I'll weigh every power and shot charge, as I do with metallic.

Do you have an opinion on Patternmaster chokes?
2 of my 5 chokes are Patternmaster.  I think the wad-strippers are a solid concept, shortening the shot string.

Ballistic Products has some primed 3.5" 12 gauge Cheddite hulls in stock, BTW.

[BareKnuckleJigs]

Thanks man!

Nothin' but Love, Lines Bro 🇺🇸
🇺🇸AMERICA🇺🇸

[efishnc]

Killer, eFish (if I may be allowed a small pun)!

Killer indeed... many, many, many times over!

Since you asked, I'll give you my conclusions on shotgun reloading (and, by extension, shooting). 

I don't think weighing powder and shot charges will ever merit for any 'standard' scattergun load, especially if you are planning on doing a fair amount of shooting.  Simply put, you cannot pack the shot pellets with the same precision in every load, so there will always be some inherent variability within your pattern... perhaps using some specific stacking shot (like Winchester blindside) might be a way to get around this, BUT then there is the problem of "fliers" spinning out of the pattern because the pellets aren't round (which is why high end lead loads use a buffer to prevent pellet deformation).

The randomness of patterns mentioned above also plays into chokes... pattern consistency (for any given diameter of choke) is based more on length of taper than anything else (longer tapers are better).  However, I would guess 99.9999% of birds not downed (within range) had little to do with uniformity of pattern, rather they were (primarily) due to poor shot placement (i.e. shooting behind, above, below, etc.) or (secondarily) due to an incorrect choke application for the task at hand (i.e. being too narrow or too wide)... I know 'a guy' (AHEM, ahem) that forgot to change out his improved cylinder from the previous fall and was scratching his head when he was not putting turkeys to rest the next spring.

As we have discussed elsewhere on the forum, the hunter/fisherman that plays to his/her points of confidence will almost always perform better in the field... so, experiment, have fun, and find what works for you.

(*It should go without saying that a print test of slug loads will prove the benefit of individual weighing, so I'd definitely give the nod on being fussy if/when you load these.)

[BareKnuckleJigs]

Roger on all that!
What I've gathered, with info on shot production/manufacturing, I lean toward thinking the "lack of precision" in making the shot could lead more-open patterns due to "minor" variations in shot weight and shape, but that's very debatable.

I'll have to go through the component shot as I go through each shot charge to see if I can detect any notable variations in individual shot weight, to determine whether or not "true precision" can be obtained (within reason).

My years loading .270 Win. lead me to think this way (respectively).
Quality ammunition is my true end goal, of course.  I work 28/14...I have the time.

Low Extreme Spread variations (pressure) do provide us the luxury of "pushing the pressure envelope".

One of the major details in my intention is light shot charges.  I do hope this venture isn't a lesson in futility, despite the few opposing opinions I've read (randomly).

I have a 10-lb. sack of F steel and some 0.375" carbon steel ball bearings (1000 count) that I may get a shop to anneal to dead-soft.  The 0000-buck steel could potentially be used as a light load of buck in the thick stuff.

I'm new to this shotshell stuff 🤣

It's not as cut-n-dry as metallic! 🤦

I plan to load what I might use to be able to eat, not so much as to continually harvest to help me avoid buying meat commercially.  I don't need a heavy stock every year.

[ctom]

In the early 70's I shot three trap leagues and reloaded a lot. I also had pheasant and goose hunting to load for.  For the league shooting I had to use factory rounds but the practice stuff I loaded for. I shot 100 rounds of practice each night. Some of the wads made for excellent pattern while others were miserable. Reloading costs then higher ammunition costs chased me away from the sport and, trust me, it was painful to leave it. The reloading for pheasant and goose took me down some different paths. One was a goose load. I liked #2 shot lead for the geese but loading it was challenging when it came to getting the shot to drop cleanly. Loader seemed to be jammed constantly. Then I discovered lead T-shot, larger than #2 and smaller than #4 buck. I could get 55 pellets of it into a 3" load stuffed into a 2-3/4" AA hull. Using my 32" trap-full barrel I could drop geese easily at 90 yards. At 40 yards all 55 pellets were in a 30" patterning circle. When the steel shot law came in I quit all bird hunting and so ended my shotshell reloading.

I loaded 7mm Mag for several years when I hunted western mountains and I loaded for 220 Swift when the fox pelt market went sky high too. Now I hunt with only muzzle-loaders.... more like a center-fire rifle than a shotgun slug and a whole world more accurate. In the last couple years I have taken more deer with my inline pistol than rifles.

[Muskygary]

Yes Tom, I agree, those were the good old days! Did a lot of rabbit, duck, and pheasant hunting back then.

[olsarge]

I remember as a kid, we had a Western Auto store in town that would break open boxes of shotgun shells so we could afford to buy them individually with our paper route money.  Won't see that happen again.  Great times.

[ctom]

We had an Imperial Station here that sold individual shells. The good-old-days. lol

Back when I was bird hunting I bought a 30 cubic foot freezer just for birds and deer. Beef, pork and chicken went in another one. In a good year it was nothing to have 125 pheasants shot in 4 states in that freezer. I used to smoke a lot of them and give them out at the holidays.

[efishnc]

I liked #2 shot lead for the geese but loading it was challenging when it came to getting the shot to drop cleanly. Loader seemed to be jammed constantly.

In the late 80s MEC introduced a larger diameter drop tube to prevent "bridging" of bigger shot sizes on the way to the shot cup (they offered the tube as a replacement part for their older reloaders already/still in service as it became standard on their newer models), and in the early 90s they introduced a cushioned edge on the shot side of the charge bar to eliminate binding... both of these innovations made reloading large shot sizes a breeze.

My standard waterfowl load is 1-1/8oz single B steel (one size down from BB)... like BKJ, I did a lot of reading and calculating to engineer the "perfect" load, and my performance tests validated what my numbers revealed beforehand.  There is always a cross-over between pellet energy and pattern density for each specific game, and when found it can be pure magic (as you had with your goose load), but neither of our webfoot loads would fare well for doves.

[efishnc]

I remember as a kid, we had a Western Auto store in town that would break open boxes of shotgun shells so we could afford to buy them individually with our paper route money.  Won't see that happen again.

Yeah, back then every gas station around at least carried .22 shells... and now you cannot return any ammo to any store (once purchased), even if it was never opened and you never left the store... what happened?

[Muskygary]

When I was 13 my father took me down to the local sporting goods store to buy my first shotgun. ( I had saved up my money from mowing lawns and fur trapping etc) The salesman asked my dad if it was ok for me to purchase shotgun shells. Dad said sure and signed a three by four index card which the store kept on file. (Had about fifty cards from all the local farm boys). Fridays after school there would always be a half dozen bicycles parked out front of the store- kids inside buying shotgun shells for their saturday hunt. The store would break open the box of shells and sell them to us for ten cents a shell! The limit on rabbits was five, pheasants were two so everyone tried to save up and buy five shells (fifty cents ) for the weekend.