PeterHenry

I suppose that's true as well. I haven't taken the long veiw on prices of game in butchers - only what I have known in my (relatively short) adult life. I saw photos of a butcher selling braces of pheasants for £4.50 last week - they were (barely plucked / still needed picking over) and quite a few were shot damaged with ripped skin in places. There's also somone online selling once frozen wood pigeon for £5.99 per bird - which seems a tad unhinged for someone who has only ever known game to be cheap.

All true - I think a large part of it is that it takes both time and effort to do something from scratch, which is the case with cooking most game - then add on top (like you say) potential imperfections and unfamilarity (and relatively high price if buying from a butcher) - and the cheap chicken from Asda looks more and more tempting. Game ready meals on the other hand - I think there's some margin for success there

I'm firmly of the belief that pheasant tastes better than chicken, and venison is as good as or better than beef. I'm also a big fan of wildfowl - although it's a little harder to cook as opposed to the farmed variety. I do have a dry plucking machine though - which speeds things up

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Easiest thing in the world - Remove the mini fillet, bash the pheasant breast / mini fillet with a tenderiser / mallet and then dredge them with seasoned flour. Dip in beaten egg, then coat in seasoned and finely ground dry bread crumbs. Fry in a good amount of oil untill each side is golden - makeing sure to move them gently a little from time to time so that they don't stick, but not so often that the breadcrumbs start to come off. Remove from pan and pat each side with kitchen paper to remove excess oil - garnish with chopped parsley and a slice of lemon. 👍 lots of pheasant curry eaten in my house - I'd go as far as saying it's about my favourite thing to make a curry with.

Those look perfect - what are you going to make with them? I've been going through a phase of pheasant schnitzels / cutlets recently

I shall try and remember to ask when I'm in there tomorrow 👍

I'm with you on that one - which is rarther the point of my first post. You can do everything correctly - gun in perfect condition, correct proof, correct cartridges, etc - but you can still end up with a damaged gun through no fault of your own. I only have photos of inside the barrels of own guns, and the score marks in those. I thought it a bit off to photograph for posterity somone else's misfortune.

Hmmm, I don't know - the gun shop I use showed me the barrels from a pair of HP proofed Beretta SL3's that had been bought in and were scored beyond belief. They were so bad, it's inconceivable it wouldn't have had an effect on the pattern.

I've found wads with holes in them, and I have guns with scored barrels - albeit that still shoot fine. But then I've pulled back on using steel shot in those guns. True, shotguns are not precision firearms - but I suspect they comes with polished bores for more than aesthetic reasons. The thing that irritates me, is that with lead - in order for you to damage a gun, either the cartridges would have to be a) massively overloaded, b) a fault with the gun, c) user error / blocked barrels, etc. Now, with steel - you can fire a gun in perfect condition, with 'appropriate' cartridges, and no user error - and it's pot luck if it's damaged or not. I'm absolutely fine with using steel from a killing perspective - and I got on equally well with copper bullets when I was deerstalking last weekend. I just don't appreciate ruining decent guns, and then worse, cartridge manufacturers wriggling out of it with a disclaimer on the side of the box.

Obviously Eley is a company, and so doesn't have a conscience as such - but I wouldn't have the nerve to put something like that on the market. I've got an all bells and whistles high performance steel proofed Browning that I bought a few years ago to use especially with steel, suspecting it would pick up some damage along the way - and I didn't even want to put them through that.

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You can see them with the naked eye, but its fairly difficult to photograph without a bore scope, which of course makes everything look significantly worse. When I had them looked at, I was told they were only cosmetic - but not if they kept appearing. My theory as to why some some guns can fire thousands of steel cartridges with no damage, and others seem to get scored in the first few shots is that there's a large variety of internal barrel profiles - different chamber lengths, forcing cone / choke profiles / internal bore diameters, etc. If for example, there's a very steep forcing cone, I can see why steel pellets may push up againt / through the wads more so than with lead, that would likely deform / or than though a shallower profile. Likewise, I can also see why pellets may push though gaps in a wad if it's got more give, having been fired in an over bored barrel. Also, that if a 2 3/4" cartridge was fired from a 3 1/2" chamber, the gap up front may allow some pellets to escape the wad / the freedom of expansion at the end of the chamber then being compressed in the forcing cone may result in a pressure spike that causes the pellets to put pressure on / push though the wads. So lots of variables - which the very general advice given out by various authorities don't really take into account. Editted to add photos of the inside of my AYA's barells

I have some photos of Lyalvale plastic wads (precision steel) that I recoved after fireing, and wasn't particularly impressed with - but no Gamebore sorry. I don't think I've ever fired a box of them in my life. My nearest gun shops stock Lyalvale, Lyalvale, Lyalvale and little else - I had to go quite out of my way to buy the Eley ones. I'll add, just so that I don't give the impression I'm anti steel - I have no issues with steel from a shooting perspective - i'm just constantly unimpressed with it from a not damaging my guns perspective. The only guns I have with score marks in the barrels are my pair of AYA's and my Browning - which are coincidently the only guns I've used with steel.

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