ADJUST TO THE TERRAIN
The most important factor in choosing guns and shotshells for pheasant hunting is the terrain in which you'll be hunting. Open country usually dictates nothing less than a 12 gauge with tight chokes. Light modified and improved modified barrels are good choices for doubles in open country. Some hunters shoot nothing but full choke (or modified and full, with doubles), but they also sometimes make mincemeat of close-flushing birds -- and miss birds at moderate ranges they would have hit with a more forgiving choke.

While I subscribe to the 12-gauge-only theory on wild birds, preserve-raised birds generally hold tighter for a pointing dog, allowing the use of more open chokes and smaller gauges. I draw the line at anything smaller than a 20 gauge, however. Pheasants are big birds that can absorb a lot of punishment. Remember, too, that your shot has to penetrate heavy wing bones and a lot of feathers to reach a pheasant's vital areas, particularly when they're headed dead away.

Size 7 1/2 shot is mandated on many preserves, effectively limiting your options, but wild birds should be pursued with size 6 shot, at minimum. It's not uncommon, on the big pheasant drives in the Midwest, to see savvy hunters stuffing the first barrel of their double guns with size 6 shot, and then loading a tight-choked second barrel with size 5 or even 4 shotshells. That's not a bad idea where long-range shots are the norm.

In all cases, quality target loads are the way to go. The shot in target loads has higher antimony content, resulting in harder lead, which deforms less upon firing and patterns better. It also hits a tad harder than the softer shot contained in ordinary game loads.

When hunting more broken terrain or mixed habitat types, pay special attention to ditches, dry creek bottoms and ravines. Pheasants often make tracks for such areas when threatened, and hunker down in the bottom or fly to safety, out of sight, just below the rim of a ditch or ravine.

This lesson was driven home to me last year in, of all places, Hawaii. I was hunting the Big Island for multiple game bird species, and was astonished at how far away the wild ringnecks were flushing. I let them go, even on the rare occasions when they flushed within range. I was after more exotic fare -- namely, a beautiful mutant version of the ringneck called the Hawaiian blue -- for mounting. My chance came late in the day when, after trailing a runner for what seemed an eternity, we caught a glimpse of a big, beautiful blue flushing up and over the rim of a steep ridge some 200 yards away.

My hunting companion and I looked at one another, shrugged and began the long, tiring climb up the ridge. I fully expected the pheasant to be long gone when we topped the ridge, but upon peering down into the deep ravine below, we spotted a suspiciously pheasant-shaped shadow hunkered down within the larger shadow of a boulder. In went the dogs, and the shadow materialized into a greenish-blue blur streaking for safety down the steep little canyon. My load of sixes ended his flight, and his spot next to a mounted ringneck on a wall of my home serves as a daily reminder of the craftiness of one of our grandest game birds.