By Pete Correale
As it goes with any of the hobbies I get into, I can never just do it casually, it always turns into some sort of an addiction. As of late, my newest drug has come in the form of shooting upland birds, specifically pheasant, either thrown from a tower, or flushed by a bird dog on a walk-up shoot. At least twice a week I’ve been draining my 401k, spending all of my hard-earned duckets on bird releases, and no matter how many I have stuffed into the fields of switchgrass, I still can never seem to scratch the itch. One would think that with all of the shooting I’ve been doing lately, I must be a crack shot, but this is not the case. As it has always been for me, I can’t seem to shoot anything proficiently, even a speargun, so I need any advantage that I can get when it comes to shotgun marksmanship.
With that said, it was only natural that I stuffed my pockets with the best loads off my local gun dealer’s shelf. I’m still not sure how to correctly pronounce Fiocchi, and its price tag is almost double some of the other well-named brands, but hell, who cares, the stuff works. This is honest to God truth when I tell you that I tried using different, cheaper loads on a recent shoot, and for whatever reason, I could not hit shit that day. Blame it on my poor shooting abilities, the wrong chokes, or even the high winds, but as soon as I switched back to shooting Fiocchi, I started killing birds again. Even the owner of my local shooting club swears by the stuff, and claims to keep a hidden stash of it stuffed away in the corner of one of his barns.
The proof is in the pudding, and there seems to be plenty of good reasons why these shells perform better than most of the competitors. Fiocchi’s Golden Pheasant Extreme nickel-plated, high-velocity lead loads not only pack a wallop, but they pattern consistently, as any good shotgun round should. Air temps colder than a witches tit? Not to worry, Fiocchi’s magnum primer is specifically designed for optimal performance in extreme cold weather conditions. Even the powder charge in these bad girls will hold up to extreme cold.
Quite honestly, the only negative I can come up with is that here in communist New York, by the time you’re done paying for all the extra fees, the required background checks, and all the bullshit taxes, a box of Fiocchi cost almost the equivalent to a fine dinner at your local gastro pub, but, for a poor shooter like myself, it is well worth it.The bottom line is this: I could take a shit in a box and mark it guaranteed, but all I would be selling you on is a guaranteed piece of shit. Just do yourself the favor and stick to the boxes labeled Golden Pheasant.
Pros: Patterns great; knocks down pheasants hard.
Cons: Expensive as hell to buy, especially after the added fees the communists in my home state put on ammo.
