Butch,
I am a northerner. We shoot dogs that run deer. In the south, they shoot dogs that don't! In college, I went to a South Carolina hunt club where they were running deer with dogs (and they kill a ton of deer). I was a guest and I showed up with my Leupold 2-7x scoped rilfled barrel shotgun that was capable of 2" groups at 100 yards. They said I could NOT use slugs and had to use buckshot as it was a safety thing with so many guys in the woods. They worried the slugs would carry too far. Needless to say, when a deer showed up at 20 yards and I missed completely with my rifled barrel I was embarassed. Later I patterned it and the results were atrocious--like one pellet hitting a poster sized paper at 20 yards. I now understood why I missed.
I have another SC friend who uses buckshot out of his SBE 28" when they do man drives on the small islands where deer hang out after being pushed on the main woods. From his pictures, I would say that buckshot is pretty darn effective when used in it proper--key word--application.
Just my 2¢.
