There's a time and a place for everything. I think you are spot on in most of what you have thought. This is just my opinion, but I think advertising has just about ruined waterfowl hunters when it comes to knowledge of shotshells. Yeah they have to sell them, and speed sells, but at the same time it's quite rare you find a duck hunter who really understands what he is shooting and why. One of the biggest myths is that steel shot needs high velocity to kill, and it's simply not true at all. You see it all the time online, "1550 fps is what you need for steel, 1350 fps loads just aren't fast enough". So you ask them what size shot they use. "#3 or #2, whatever is cheaper, doesn't seem to matter". They don't even realize a single shot size change makes a bigger difference than 200 fps when it comes to penetration. A #2 at 1350 fps is going to penetrate deeper than a #3 at 1550 fps. That goes for any kind of shot, not just steel shot.
I'm not sure what you consider HD shot, but if you are interested I do have a bismuth load I like to use that's a 1 1/8oz buffered load at 1150 fps with 700x powder using nothing but card and fiber wads. It's in the Tom Rosters bismuth reloading book. From what I recall it patterns about 80% at 40 yards from my fixed full choke 1897. Nothing spectacular, just a good all around load with ligher recoil.
