My father told me about how his grand father loaded his brass shells for his 8ga.When he ran out of powder and shot to load,he would cut open two 12ga. shells and dump the powder and shot in one 8 ga load.I think he was using smokeless powder.My oldest son has the gun and shoots it.The bores are too good to have been shot much with black powder.The gun was in constant use until 1948 by my great grand father.In his old age,I was told he would dump a basket of corn in the yard and wait for the geese to come in with most of their heads toward the center of the pile of corn before shooting them.He was know to have killed as many as 10 geese with one shot from his front porch on the Eastern Shore of Md.Back in the day they shipped large amounts of ducks and geese to Baltimore's Lexington Market for sale.My father remembers their being 98 dreessed geese in the house at one given time.If these old guns could talk I bet they could tell some interesting stories.