my experience is with hunting waterfoul with 16 guage smoothbore flintlock.. .. ive shot ducks setting in the water with number 4 bismuth at 25 yards to have them simply fly off.. i dont have a second shot..black powder guns dont have the volocity that modern guns do. so pennetration is less.. body shots are GREEAT with flying birds where you can retrive them when down..a breast mussle shot when flying will bring a bird down.. this is what i call a typical body shot.. the breast is a very large part of the bird and with three hits to the bird one of them will hit a vital, breast or wing on the average.. but rarely kill it.. especially with black powder.. my favorite place to hunt ducks is an open field with a stream meandering thru it,, if i knock one down with body shot i can retrieve it without a dog.. in the brush, no second shot, small gun(less than 12 guage), big bird, wings down, i personally would go for the head shot.. the head shot is recomended by waterfoul experts for downed bird, 6's at 25 yards just plain clobbers them dead almost every time(six shot bismuth) that ive used. i dont get alot of second shots tho, sometimes there trapped in a creek, swimming ususally down stream.... in many years ive never brought down a goose with a body shot using a single shot smoothbore 16 gauge pass shooting. im sure a killed several but i never was able to retrive them, they never even slowed down in my line of sight.. i broke the hip in one that i jumped and it didnt stop flying until the sececond shot hit the wing.. that was years ago with a side by side pedersoli 10 gauge with big black powder loads and bismuth..(quite expensive to hunt with by the way..) .. if youve been haveing good luck with turkeys with body shots i appologise to anyone that has, . i personally dont think the odds are with it tho with a bird on the ground.... dave
