[fabsroman]

KT,

Steel does slow quicker than lead, but it doesn't have abnormalities in it to make it fly off out of the "pattern". Lead becomes deformed upon firing, before it leaves the barrel, so it has flat spots that tend to push the pellets wide out of the pattern.

The thread I was talking about was way before the "Great Crash." It was a really good thread, if I am not mistaken.

As far as buffleheads are concerned, how about having a pair come into the decoys, miss with the first shot, yet they land anyway. As you go to pull the trigger on them in the water, you see your pattern smash all around where one of them was, but there is no duck there anymore because it dove underwater. The other duck is gone at this point, however, with pure reflex you catch the other speedster as it comes up 5 yards further away from where it went under. That was a fun day and a lesson well learned by me.