One shot with a Luger

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This was in a time and place where pheasants were in season, nesting wasn't. (Snow on the ground, nobody said it was a hen either.) It was also legal in that place to take one with a pistol, and no, it didn't go to waste.

On the other hand, it was long ago in my youth, and yes, there was a certain element of mob mentality involved. On the other hand, if I had walked it up with a shot gun , no one would think a thing of it.

So would I do it again? Probably not, at least in those circumstances. There are those who would view shooting a pheasant with a pistol as "unsporting", but on average it's a lot easier to get a pheasnt with a shot gun than with a pistol. I'm not at all sure I would view deliberately setting out pheasnat hunting with a hand gun as "unsporting". You would have to shoot them on the ground for safety reasons.

Some things are goofy if you stop to think about them. Where I live now, it's illegal to shoot a deer with a centerfire rifle because it has too much range. But a deer generally has a hill or thick brush behind it. On the other hand it's legal to shoot a squirrel with that center fire rifle, a thing I would not contemplate for obvious reasons. But I never heard of a deer in a tree. I'd like to hunt squirrels with a 22LR but I'm afraid to shoot up into a tree with one.