A friend built his own LH 8 gauge Percussion, single barrel shotgun, and I have fired it. NO 6 gauge guns, yet. Sorry.
Large bore guns have some advantages, and some disadvantages. You have to weigh both, and make your own decision. Weight of these cannons is usually the biggest disadvantage. The Cost of all the powder and shot they use is another. ( They do have large appetites!) The bigger they are, the less " Bang for your Buck" you get. And limits imposed by both State and Federal Hunting regulations on the kind of game that can be hunted is NO SMALL CONCERN.
Unless you are going to choke such a gun, you are only shooting a Bigger Cylinder Bore gun. The pellets are going to slow down at the same distance from the barrel as pellets fired from a 10 gauge. A Bigger Bore shotgun does NOT GIVE you longer range. It does give you a lot more shot in your pattern at 30 yards, however. The question is always, Is this added shot in the pattern necessary? BP shotguns, no matter the gauge, are not going to produce the same velocities as modern smokeless powder shotguns do, and simply cannot be expected to take birds out at longer ranges, UNLESS they are choked. But, even with a choked BP shotgun, your range is still going to be limited by the4 velocity and shot size.
There are modern shotguns with specialized choke tubes that can produce killing patterns out past 60 yards! The original Market hunters used large bore, BP shotguns, but they were taking raking shots at flocks of birds sitting on the water, in order to maximize the birds hit out to 50 yards. You can't do that today and stay out of jail very long.
Big, heavy guns work fine for pass shooting, but are the not first choice when hunting upland game. If you are in a fixed blind, or pit, having a heavy gun to lift and point is not that much work. In an upland field, where, hopefully, you are hunting over great dogs, who both locate and then point and retrieve the birds you shoot, the action can be very fast, and a heavy gun is just hard to move.
Forget hunting doves- even if its pass shooting. Doves can turn on a dime, and give you back 9 cents in change. And, Doves often do just that, for the heck of it. All the camo in the world is simply not going to make the doves fly straight into your gun. Dove hunting puts the humility back into the wing shooting sports. No one expects to NOT MISS a dove or two during a hunt.
My best friend, Bruce Shurts, did take up a challenge from another friend to use his .410 exclusively one season to shoot dove. He waited for shots inside 20 yds, and killed over 60 dove straight, over several days of shooting, before he missed. I hunted with him one of those days, and watching him pass on shots, and only take those that were high percentage kill shots( he would wait for the dove to do a "Dippy-Doo", and shoot it when it came back up to its prior line of travel), was a study in shooter discipline.
If you are not going to hunt waterfowl, using non-toxic shot, the Cost of such a cannon( 6 gauge) becomes questionable, too. What do you do with it once your buy it? Many clubs restrict the size of the bore a shotgun can be used to shoot clay targets at the club. If you can't hunt Waterfowl, and you can't shoot clay target matches at the local club, What do you do with it?
And, don't kid yourself. While BP tends to shove your shoulder, rather than KICK it like Smokeless powers do, these big guns, with large powder charges, and larger loads of shot do KICK. Yes, you can load such a cannon down, and shooting 12 gauge loads in an 8 gauge gun( and presumably a 6 ga. gun) provides a very light shove to the shoulder- much better(softer) than shooting the same load in a lighter, 12 gauge gun. But, ask yourself: If you are going to shoot light loads, then why not simply buy a 12 or 10 gauge gun( You can also down load these guns to shoot 28, 20, and 16 gauge loads)?
I was glad to shoot my friend's 8 gauge, and fired it on more than one occasion-- just to be able to know what it was like to hold and fire such a gun. But, I don't want one.
May I suggest to you that you find someone with a 10 gauge shotgun who will let you shoot it several times. The hands-on experience will help you decide just how badly you "want" that 6 gauge.
Best wishes. :hatsoff:
