doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com So, how poorly do 'most' hunters shoot?

Not having reviewed every post on this thread, I would contribute simply that; Have gun that fits, will hit bird frequently. Have gun that doesn't will hit bird much much less frequently.

Brian,

Different venues definitely offer different problems as far as shot placement. Chasing Bobwhites in Black Jack timber or thick Sumac doesn't guarantee dinner as does some of the mucky conditions I've shot Woodcock in.
Most all of us (that hold down a permanent job) have a plenty of constraints on our fun time. I used to shoot rifles predominantly, High Power, Small Bore. Scheutzen and Black Powder..I was decent at most. Several years ago my focus switched to clays and have had decent success at that. Consequently my rifle shooting has suffered. I'd like to do it all at a high level but as already mentioned there are plenty of other things to address. Personally, at this juncture in my life Clays has my main attention for leisure time with the added benefit of improving my game shooting.

Thanks for simplifying things for me, PA24. There are folks in the Western United States that hunt birds in thick cover. Ruffed grouse, for example . . . although never having hunted them out there, I understand they're not as nervous as our Midwest/Eastern US birds. Also some of the western quail species, other than the desert birds.

Spreaders are of value to people who don't hunt in thick cover ALL the time, which pretty much describes grouse and woodcock hunters. I wrote the chapter on grouse guns in the recently-published "A Passion For Grouse" . . . my qualification being that I've missed more grouse with more different guns than any other writer they could find. Brian's 1 for 3 is a pretty typical success rate on ruffs, as verified in the hunting logs submitted by the Loyal Order of Dedicated Grouse Hunters--LODGH. What he didn't add is that you're likely to get 1 shot for every 3 grouse you flush. Do the math . . . that means the average hunter needs to flush 9 birds to kill 1. Which is why grouse hunters (and even more so, woodcock hunters--doodles being shot at even closer range, and sometimes in even thicker cover) like open chokes pretty much ALL the time. So unless someone has a gun with sentimental value on which he does not want to tamper with the chokes, he'll probably just go ahead and open them rather than going to the time and expense required to shoot spreaders. Spreaders were invented for INFREQUENT users of open chokes, not FREQUENT ones. You won't see many skeet shooters using their trap guns, for example, and feeding them spreaders.

But the point you seem to have missed--and still seem to miss--is that as soon as you put a spreader in your M or F barrel and pull the trigger, it's no longer M or F. What's stamped on the barrel, or the constriction you measure, does not determine the choke. That's determined by the resulting pattern--which, if it isn't any more open than M from a spreader load, means you need to find better spreaders. And if you were to hunt grouse and woodcock, or other consistently close range game, you'd have more birds in more edible quality as a result of opening your choke--whether with a hone or with spreaders.

And not to denigrate all your western hunting experience, but I lived in Iowa during the years when it was the best pheasant state in the nation. Did just fine shooting nothing tighter than LM--and that was in the tight barrel of guns usually choked more like skeet in the R barrel. A good dog, knowing how to hunt the birds . . . no need for a bunch of choke on pheasants. Guided hunters on wild Iowa roosters for a few years during the 90's, and sad to say, I saw plenty of misses at ranges where cyl would have stoned roosters.

Well Mr. Brown let's just say your ideas are vastly different from mine. In my hormone charged youth my favorite pheasant gun was a ten pound 1889 Remington 10 bore. One barrel loaded with #2's and the other with #4's. The long shots were mine in our hunting party. 40 yards I would start to think about pulling a trigger. I sure would have had fun cleaning the air on your client's misses and making your dogs go the extra mile. Now I'm on a downhill pull to 60 years old and the guns are now seven pound 12 bores. The chokes remain the same Full/Mod, still #4's and I still like the long shots.

I don't know if you have to be on the downhill to prefer 4s and 2s, JRB. In my seacoast fishing village, that's all we used for ducks and geese, nothing else was ordered in, and limited to one size today my preference would No. 4. There wasn't a gun that wasn't M/F. Today it's all clickety-clacks.

In the scheme of things, and at the risk of quoting a democrat, what difference does it make?

I don't think anyone on this board is shooting birds with a pricey sxs because that's the only way they can put food on the table. If putting food on the table was the task, I would think rustling cattle or poaching a deer would be more successful. Wandering around with an old half lame or half trained dog shooting cat food aint exactly "a need". It's all about fun and none of it's any more serious than playing donky kong, IMO.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of pheasant hunters can't hit 40+ yard shots at pheasants--or when they do, they're more likely to only cripple the birds, then lose them, rather than kill them cleanly. Tom Roster's steel shot lethality tests on pheasants--preserve birds rather than wild ones, which are easier to bag--showed that of those birds hit inside 30 yards, all but 2 out of 68 were recovered. A wounding loss rate of 3%. That compares to a wounding loss rate of 15% for birds at 40 yards or beyond. Of the 1300-odd wild roosters shot between 1987-2006 over my dogs--4 shorthairs, a pointer, a Gordon setter, an English setter, and a Brittany--we had a wounding loss rate of 6%. Looking at birds lost, the longer it takes a dog to get to the bird in question, the greater the chances of losing the bird. That's true whether it's due to a bird hit at longer range, or one hit with some other factor that gives a crippled bird more of a head start (woven wire fence, road, waterway with steep banks etc). A more open choke means a greater chance for the average hunter to bag birds at closer range. At 30 yards, 1 1/8 oz 6's through a cyl choke should kill pheasants; 1 1/4 oz 6's through IC should be good at close to 40 yards. Beyond that, where most people will either miss or only cripple, you do need to be a much better than average shot, and use a tighter choke and larger shot to put birds down for the count.

I feel the same way. If you're out walking around the wetland, prairie, or woods w/dog and friends, who the heck cares what your percentage is? It's supposed to be fun. Missing IS part of the fun...right? The jokes, the razzing by friends, the internal questions about how in the world I could miss that beautifully pointed rooster I walked all day to get a shot at. Afterall, it's called hunting, not "killing".

And, to me, an old vintage sxs is a handicap anyway. I shoot my Beretta 391 much better. But, I enjoy it less. The sxs adds to the whole process. I understand that more now moving into middle age.

Phunter and Chuck express my outlook perfectly. The only thing I could add is I do my best to be aware of my limitations as a shooter and keep my attempts limited to shots that are within my abilities. And I don't go for the next bird until I've found the last one... or spent a long time searching.

If you miss clean, fine. Problem is, a lot of "misses"--especially on pheasants, because they're both hard to bring down and hard to recover if brought down with 2 good legs--aren't clean. So you're crippling, not killing . . . and may very well not recover the bird, especially without a good dog.

Personally, while you cannot eliminate all birds knocked down and lost, losing a bird--at least to me--is the least "fun" part of hunting. That's why I shoot quite a few clay birds for practice, and why I try to shoot within my capability. I very seldom shoot at birds beyond 40 yards, unless they've already been hit but not brought down. And I hunt with dogs that are pretty good at retrieving cripples. If I'm hunting a young or inexperienced dog, I'm even more selective about the shots I take. I'm certainly not shooting for food; nor, however, am I shooting to feed the predators and scavengers.