Goose brain

[kent]

recently there have been a number of posts relating to head / brain shooting geese with (airguns) and the use of smaller sized steel shot on goose at range keeping the pattern well up-front (using great shooting skill).

Well yesterday with a few Geese to prepare I decided to do a little research to satisfy myself in my own thoughts that a true brain shot was impossible to predict by design with a shotgun at any sort of range and that anyone shooting at geese with an airgun is just a callous fool.

Severing the head by splitting the atlas joint from a Large (53" wingspan) Canada and skinning off the head to expose the bare scull. I proceeded by opening up the beak, opening its gape and ramming it into the ground for stability then splitting the scull along its length with my knife aided by some fairly heavy blows I must say (the first thing that actually quite surprised me was the thickness and strength of the bone). Quite honestly its a lot tougher than you might imagine, no.3 steel at 50yds are very unlikely to penetrate the cranial cavity from the side (although they might get there via the eye socket in front of it or the underside).

The Brain sits behind the eye along the back dome extending 1 1/4" in a slight curve matching the scull shape and extending about 3/4" in height (if you look at the cross section. Interesting it seems to be split into two lobes front and back, and I wonder is this is the goose version of our left and right lobes? I think from its very size you should need one hellishly dense pattern to place a shot directly into the brain by design, as for putting an air rifle shot into it forget it unless the goose was sleeping or nailed to a board (I am joking on that last point BTW- don't do it as per experiment please LOL). Yes the brain is to mobile and too small for even the best rifle shots to hit consistently under field conditions and 3/4 " giving us very little lee way on elevation

The Goose was one of a brace I shot with no.2 steel, one died within a second or two of hitting the ground bleeding out fast through a neck artery the other needed a quick follow -up shot on the water when it raised its head although I maybe pushed the range a little too far with that one being behind on the first barrel.

Now my pal shot a brace from the same position with steel bb and both died very quick one folding dead on impact as a shot broke the neck clean in flight ( I saw the strike and picked the bird! Both his also had shot passing through into the body cavity, creating haemorrhage- mine did not! So with appropriate shot you do get the insurance of a few body hits even with your spread mainly up-front on the head and neck.

[henry d]

Interesting

[silver pigeon 3]

Very interesting Kent and fair play to you for taking the time to do it. I shot my 1st goose of the season yesterday with steel bb's and the energy of the pellets is huge, the bird i had took 10 pellets, 4 in the neck (which broke the neck and severed the wind pipe) 1 in the wing (which again broke the bone clean in two) and 5 into the front half of the body, 4 of these penetrated right through into the cavity destroying the lungs and heart.

Carefully loking at each pellet path i would confidently say that out of the 10 pellets that hit 8 off these would have brought the goose down individually.

Edited October 7, 2013 by silver pigeon 3