ORIGINAL: vadeerkiller
Might as well give my 2 cents worth. From my experience and just like other people said, trydifferent choke tubes and ammo to find out what your gun likes. As far as buckshot, living here in Virginia in some counties it is all you can use.Being from the midwest and coming to Virginia I thought it was the strangest thing in the world. Now using dogs and buckshot has grown on me.It is effective to a point and the best option when shooting at deer in the cutover that are hauling freight.
Yes, there are counties in VA in which buckshot is the only permitted deer ammo. I have hunted in some of them, and I
came to the conclusion that the local "good ol' boys" kept the law that way in oirder to limit the hunting opportunities of those who did not belong to their hunting clubs, those of us that had no packs of hounds with which to chase the deer! The reason I think this is because the topographyof those places was sufficiently hilly to permit the safe use of high-powered rifles, at least from tree stands!
In addition, the deer in these counties have become so adept at avoiding hounds, after 200 years of doing so, a human on foot has no chance at all when trying to stalk or still-hunt them!