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

Lets get this back on topic.
I am going to qualify my answer by separating my results by the species of game pursued. I hunt Partridge (ruff grouse for the uninitiated) in the overgrown pastures, brains, Hawthorne, thickets and rocky orchards of the Catskills of NYS. That type of rough shooting isn�t Pheasant hunting in the cornfields of Iowa or hunting Huns and Sharpie�s on the grasslands of Montana. Not saying that those hunts are a cakewalk but there is a difference. Where I hunt it seems like you always need one leg shorter than the other.

My hunting gun of choice is almost always an AH Fox double in 20 or 16 unless it�s a crappy day and then the SKB 20 SxS comes out. I hunt with my Field Bred Springer. We only have a 4 bird limit and I have never limited, never tried, never cared to. But maybe it would be an ego booster to accomplish it once. But it isn�t necessary.

Back in the early mid 80�s, when I got my first bird dog ( another Springer) I trained her behind my house. I was living on the edge of town and had a nice meadow about 100 yards by 300 yards bordered by brush and hedges on three sides. My neighbor owned it. He was in his 80�s at the time and blind. He was a died in the wool partridge gunner (and ducks) . He owned the feed mill in ton and also had some duck hunting lands u in Canada at one time but his true passion was Partridge. He ran Springers and shot a Remington 32 and a Browning Superposed; both 12 ga. Guns. Whenever I had the dog working out back, his daughter would ask me to bring my dog in to see him when we were done. Kate would run in and jump up on his lap and he would hold her and stroke her and then start telling me stories of bird hunting when he was younger, growing up in the area. I was in my 20�s and didn�t realize at the time that I should have taken some notes and made some sort of record of his hunting experiences. Anyway, his one bit of advice to me was that if you wanted to kill partridge, you had to put lead in the air. If a bird flushed and you saw pieces of it through the branches and cover, swing and shoot . if you ever wait for that open shot, you will never kill a bird. Having a dog was a necessity because you didn�t always see where that bird might fall.

I remember later on in life bringing friend to chase birds and they would yell �bird� hen one flushed and I would wait and listen and no shot. I would ask why they didn�t shoot and they would invariably say they didn�t have a clear shot. I would give them the advice given me but they still wouldn�t shoot.

I can�t count the number of times I flushed a bird and swung and tracked it and shot and shot again and watched t drop, after branches were shredded and leaves fluttered to the ground. It�s not like hunting ducks or pheasants or quail or Huns or Sharpies. I may be biased but that�s how I see it. I generally shoot about 3 shells for each bird I get. I shoot clays once or twice a year , not because I don�t want to but because of the other things in my life that I have to do.

I will say that my now since departed hunting partner usually shot 75-80 percent. The last year he was alive he did have his best day ever, he killed 4 Partridge with 4 shells. He never missed. The last bird he hit but he didn�t find it for over half an hour. He knew he hit it but didn�t see exactly where it dropped. He didn�t have a dog. He searched and searched and found it. A true sportsman in every sense. Then he up and died on me.

Someday in the future I will become an old crusty bustard like the majority of you guys here on the board and Ill be able to spend my golden years shooting clays, trading guns and setting others straight. And of course my average will then be in the 80-90 % range.