I cleaned my birds this morning. The first one yesterday, the feathers flew on the first shot, but he was still going, so I gave him a second helping of 5s and a bigger plume of feathers and down he went. Cleaning him, I found 15 pellets just filleting him out and 3 more cleaning the meat, must have been 2 pretty solid hits. The other 2, not a pellet was recovered. My last one was a longer shot, my finger was getting numb and on the flush, I struggled getting safety off, by the time I felt/heard it, the rooster was out pretty good, I could tell it was just winged. Gus did an nice job to find it about 8 yards from the line I had it on and got him corraled quickly. It wasn't a long hunt, but between some snow and not hunting for a couple weeks, I was about spent. I would have been ready to swap the 11-87 for one of the lightweight offerings that many are using.
