It's been interesting reading everyone's opinions about Black Clouds. I'll agree that they do a very good job of killing ducks stone dead, but I really do not like them and prefer that none of my guests in my blind use them. The reason is that they tear the hell out of the birds. We like to eat our ducks, and pluck them by waxing them. It's harder to properly wax a bird when his breast is torn open, and the birds often have large holes or tears in them with Black Clouds.

Perhaps our shooting is different than most on here do, I don't know. We hunt decoying birds, and 90% of the ducks we kill are 35 yards and closer. For our hunting, I've never seen a need for anything larger than a 2 3/4" gun shooting standard 1 1/8 or 1 1/4 ounce loads in 4s, 5s, or 6s, depending on what we're shooting. If steel, then we use 4s; if shooting Hevishot the shot size really doesn't matter. Heck, the shotgun I've used for ducks over the last 27 years only has a 26" IC barrel on it; so maybemy experience isn't typical.