[fabsroman]

TJ,

I agree with you about the perfect quail gun and when I hunt planted ones I use a 20 ga. autoloader with IC.

I think the shot size depends on everything going on the day of the hunt. If the wind is really moving and the shots might be long (i.e., the birds catch the wind and move), I will use 8's. Otherwise, #9's are fine. It doesn't take much to kill a quail. Of course, my uncle is always commenting that he wants to be able to knock all the feathers off the birds like I do.

If you were to reload, you could use a 8.5 and that would probably work really well on quail.

Another thing I have to take into consideration is that on these planted bird "hunts", I could possibly run across a chukar or a pheasant. Granted, everybody else I hunt with is a pretty decent shot and they are all using 12 ga. guns and not a single planted pheasant or chukar has escaped us, so I don't worry too much about it.