I wouldn't say useless as I have killed many, many waterfowl with steel. I WOULD say steel is not as effective as lead or some of the modern substitutes. I switched to bismuth, load my own, and find it , as far as I can tell, as effective as lead. Now, the cost for any of the "store bought" modern substitutes is brutal, Don't miss often! The bismuth shot cost is about $1 per ounce and going up but I'm less than $30/box for the one ounce 12 ga. ammo I use over decoys for ducks and find it effective easily out to about 50 yds. I see fewer cripple ducks, many more cleanly killed ones with bismuth. Easy to load as well, uses same wads as I use with lead, just about 10% volume difference.
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