When I was a kid growing up around marshes in the northeast, I used to pick up empty shotgun shells whenever I found them in the weeds, left there in duck season. 12 gauge was the norm, with the occasional 10 gauge hull spotted. I never found 20 gauge shells back then, but I did find my fair share of 16 gauge empties—but if I searched those same marshes today, I doubt I’d find any. What happened to the 16 gauge, and will it ever come back to popularity?Bird blasting @ TFB: Mossberg Pro Waterfowl Lineup Comes Optics-Ready Now Fudd Friday: Is A Shotgun Ammo Crackdown Coming? Ruger's NEW Red Label III Shotgun: Return Of A Classic Fudd Friday: What Shotgun Gauge For What Hunting Season? Why did people love 16 gauge shotguns?Like we’ve told you before, the diameter of a shotgun gauge, or bore, gets larger as the gauge number gets smaller. A 10 gauge has a larger-diameter barrel than a 28 gauge. And since the 16 gauge is therefore larger than a 20 gauge but smaller than a 12 gauge, it was long favored by hunters and shooters who wanted a gun that “hit like a 12, but carried like a 20.”In other words, the 16 gauge was a compromise, with a heavier payload than a 20 gauge, but a lighter frame and barrel than a 12 gauge. Or at least, that was the theory. With older shotgun designs, this theory was indeed valid. One of the most famous examples would be the Browning Auto Five Sweet Sixteen (as used by Phil Robertson in some of his earlier videos). This shotgun was built on a dedicated frame matched to the 16 gauge cartridge, so it was indeed lighter than a 12 gauge but could put more pellets downrange than a 20 gauge—at least, that was the case before magnum shells became popular. This wasn’t the case for all vintage repeater shotguns, but you could find a quality double or semi-auto with specific 16 gauge frames for much of the 20th century.Interestingly, I remember watching a hunting show filmed in the Amazon jungle, and despite never being exposed to a gun magazine, the natives there were using 16 gauge shotguns for that same reason; they wanted a light gun that still had decent hitting power. Maybe it wasn’t all in North American and European shooters’ imaginations.There was one other good reason to go with 16 gauge—supposedly, it put out a superior shot column when compared to other cartridges.We don’t have time for an in-depth look at shot columns here, but the basic, oversimplified outline is this: Your pattern spread tells how big an area your shotgun’s pellets cover at a specific distance. Your pattern density tells how the pellets are distributed inside that area. And the length of your shot column determines at what time the pellets reach the target—ideally, you want all pellets to be arriving at the same time, but in reality, that doesn’t happen. Your pellets don’t exit the barrel at the same time; your shot column (the shape of all your pellets as they exit the barrel) is a 3D shape, not a 2D shape. Physics interferes further with the shot column once your payload is hurtling towards the target.Theoretically, the physics of bore sizing and cartridge performance mean a 16 gauge is able to produce a superior shot column, getting more clay-breaking or bird-busting pellets on target at the same time, which means better scores on the range or more birds in your bag. Admittedly, only true shotgun nerds care about this. I never hear talk about shot columns among other waterfowl hunters. And yet, I’ve seen first-hand that it matters. My old 10 gauge killed far better at long distance than any 3.5-inch 12 gauge I’ve owned. Most crusty old goose shooters would claim that is because of the superior shot columns from the 10 gauge. If you’d like to learn more about how shot columns matter, check out Bob Brister’s book Shotgunning: The Art And Science. Brister based his research on actual field research, shooting at targets his wife towed behind a car. Decline of the 16 gaugeFor decades, the 16 gauge was a respectable cartridge for ducks and upland game, so what happened? To put it bluntly: The 16 gauge was killed by money.In the decades after World War II, the American manufacturers emphasized cheap guns over nice guns. Most mass-produced shotguns never came out in a specific 16 gauge frame; they were 12 gauge guns with a 16 gauge barrel, and the 16 gauge’s superior handling was repressed. The 16 gauge might still have survived, but when Winchester developed the 3-inch magnum 20 gauge load in the 1950s, shooters could now have a shotgun that “hit like a 16, carried like a 20.” Or so they thought, at least. That mid-range between the 20 gauge and 12 gauge loads had now been taken up by a more powerful 20 gauge. The 16 gauge never came in a 3-inch load, because that would be silly with the 12 gauge already in existence, and interest withered.Finally, the 16 gauge was also mostly ignored by clay shooters, who increasingly opted for 12 gauge or 20 gauge to fit into the rulebook and to find cheaper bulk-priced shells. The 16 gauge todayYou can still buy brand-new 16 gauge shotguns, but they’re harder to find, especially in North America. The only 16 gauges in Mossberg’s lineup are over/unders. It’s the same for Savage Arms. Remington’s website will trick you into thinking you can buy a 16 gauge Wingmaster, but they have no SKUs for such a gun. Winchester doesn’t sell a 16 gauge either. At least Browning has 10 different 16 gauge models in its lineup right now; take your choice of the new A5 platform or a Citori over/under. I haven’t owned a 16 gauge for a long time myself. The last one I had was a bolt-action Mossberg that I gave away to a friend so he’d be set for deer season. I will confess that I’ve been looking for another one lately, though, especially a Cooey Model 84. They’re an old-fashioned gun, but the 16 gauge is now an old-fashioned cartridge, and I think it would be a perfect match.