I'm showing my ignorance here but I assume when shooting doves which are a smaller bird that you are using a smaller game 'shot' load. If the muzzle covers the bird then I'm guessing the shot pattern also covers the bird. How do you enjoy dinner if there are dozens of tiny steel BBs in the meat of the bird? Maybe they are easy to spot and extract while cleaning?
I only use #8 shot with my improved cylinder for doves. (We can still shoot lead for doves in Kansas except for the big migratory "bottoms" that hold tens of thousands of ducks, geese, etc. during the migration.)
My pattern is pretty wide fairly quickly.
I also think doves are very "fragile" birds. I have seen them go down and then start walking while obviously injured. I try to quickly grab those birds and humanely harvest them. When cleaning, they may have a single pellet in their body.
Doves are very small birds, so we just breast them to eat. I will pluck an obvious pellet, or tug out an impaled feather, which sometimes extracts the pellet. Very rarely do I clean a completely "blasted" bird, which as you said should just be tossed.
OTOH, I have shot pheasants with magnum #4s and seen dust and feathers get blasted off of the bird. It pinwheels down to the ground, bounces, and then shakes its head and takes off running before the dogs can get there. I assume those birds die overnight, and I hate those shots. I want to only harvest, or miss!
I am sure there are many better hunters on the forum that can give you wiser advice for dove hunting, if you are perhaps wanting to start. It is a nice style of "family hunting" because you can generally sit and talk under comfortable weather conditions and watch for incoming birds. You can even do it with non-ambulatory people if you have a vehicle to get them to the hunting site.
Kids are also very good to take because their sharp eyes may spot birds that the adults never see. You would think flying doves would be obvious, but they are surprisingly tricky!
