What an awesome trip. Seeing those beautiful shots and reading your commentary about hunting at 12,000 feet and chasing birds had me thinking. Seems you put in a lot of effort into it and not certain what elevation you live at but still that is a great challenge and rewarding adventure. Also saw you were hunting with a 410 with probably good reason to reduce carry weight. However in my mind if going to that much effort would want a little more shot in the pattern in a big open pattern to give me a higher advantage. You doing it with a 410 is pretty amazing if your gun is choked tight like most 410's I know about.
Most of the time my hunting does not have extreme elevation differences but doing a little research it could make difference in pattern and gun performance depending on elevation and temperature differentials and what choked gun should someone consider. It is all relative I guess but thought this piece very interesting. Their study was based on trap shooting 900 ft elevation to 5,000 elevation comparison with same shot and guns. Essentially a light choke say IC patterns very tightly at some good distances at higher elevation than it does at lower elevation. I'm sure you can make any case study prove your point but there is some reasonable validity to this one.
Essentially us flat landers can probably justify a gun with more choke than someone that hunts at a higher elevation. I mean if your shooting a 410 with tight chokes it might be like shooting them with a 22 rifle at 12K.
http://www.claytargettesting.com/Tem...e&Altitude.pdf
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