doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Wild Birds vs. Game Preserves

Not hawks, but yahoos!
In the dead of winter the quail would feed/shelter under the cedars.
No hawk could get thru that tangled mess.
Finding 16 & 20g hulls, and me with all 12s.
Yep poachers.

Well get this........my state cares more about re-establishing ELK than helping the small game! HOORAY Ky has the largest Elk heard east of the Mississippi River!&*%@*^! GREAT! But don't get me wrong I'd love to get drawed for one of those 100 permits. But I'd win the lottery first. Actually I'd rather see them spent all that dough on the small game program instead. Who would dare to estimate what this Elk program has cost?

Wild Turkeys.........I love huntin them. But don't even think they are not at fault to quail decline! :rolleyes:

I think that hunting preserves are a very important part of hunting in America today. Without them, many folks would not be able to get out and hunt much at all.

I hunt wild pheasants, quail, dove, turkey, ducks, and geese hard each year.

But, before the wild bird season(s)open and after they close, you'll see me putting in time at a quality preserve, working my dogs on mostly carry-over birds, and enjoying every minute of it.

There certainly are preserves that aren't worth the time of day, and represent no challenge and are kind'uva an insult to hunting in general. But there's also those that do it right, and add a lot to a year's hunting experience.

Tell you what, I've more than once seen a "I only hunt wild birds" guy show up at a preserve, and found that both they and their dogs "weren't as advertized".

Well some people are all about quanity and some are about quality. Reserves tend to cater to those who want to kill a large bag limit, fairly easily. No sin in this but it is like dating a hooker and thinking that she went ot bed with you because you got lucky. It is a bussiness, not a labor of love, same for the reserves.

Many with small land areas are very limited in what they can do. Cover and realistic hunting situations are impossible to present very well in less than several hundred acres. Not trying to be a snob but cover, safe rest areas and multiple feed plots take up a lot of space. If a reserve has one feed plots, two areas of cover and no areas that birds are safe from hunter then finding them is about a simple as 1,2,3 and just about as much fun.

The only thing less fun than a poor reserve is being the hunter at a feild trial. Here Bob throw that duck up in front of me so I can kill it for the dog. Now wait until I can not miss. Throw it that direction. Wait until the dog is looking at us. No fun for at all in this. Might as well ring their necks and shoot blanks.

Well put Jon.

On the SSBSS I read another good preserve use, and that's when your dog is old. My ECS is 9 this year and she can't run the same as 5 years ago, and next year we might be preserve-bound. And that's OK, I'll be happy to pretend the hooker loves me.

KY,

I can't buy into a number of your points. The preserve I go to is over 1000 acres, has wild birds on and all around it, and the owners go to great lengths to make the experience as much like the real thing as possible. Plus, many times it is the "real thing" as wild birds are taken. So are birds that have been out for several weeks or even months.

As for "loading up", I think you've just not seen preserve hunting done in a quality manner. Many hunters will show up late-morning or early afternoon and spend 3 or 4 hours walking in order to get a bird or two. And the count doesn't matter to them, as it provides a way to get out in the outdoors with their dog and do something they both really enjoy. What's wrong with that?

I think it's really neat to go out to my preserve in late January or February, when all of the wild season's are over, and bag a couple of birds that have been out for a number of months. It's a lot of fun, and not too far off from the real thing.

And it beats setting behind a computer and talking about it.

Hunting wild bird hunting is wonderful, and I love it tremendously. But, preserve hunting adds quality hunt days to both ends of my (and my dogs)season, and has done so for many years.

I don't see the need to put down preserves by those who claim to be "wild birds" only hunters. Without preserves our hunting sport, and the number of hunting brothers we would have, would be dimenished considerably.

And, so would all those wild bird counts in South Dakota.

Thanks for all the response. I am at a writers conference this weekend or would have posted earlier. The issue is that with less habitat and acces we are looseing hunters at an alarming rate. Recruitment to replace aging hunters is about .67 to 1 nationwide. I'm thinking that a less than perfect hunting experience is better than none at all. Obviously we need to encourage higher quality hunts from preserves but I can't see that calling preserve hunting a sham is good for our sport. I think that often we stress things to emphasise the quality of our own life experences.

Thanks again for your input.

Dick

North Carolina is as bad or worse than the rest of the SE states regarding small game repopulation. As Vice-President of the NC Handicapped Sportsman Inc. I've participated in the Study groups for hunter retention ad nauseum. Saddly small game is way down the list of NCWD priorities. They have some wonderful study plots(CURE) but only open to select drawings. The millions of NC Game Lands Acres are a veritable ecologic wasteland for small game. They give a myriad of reasons, "words, not birds!" Now down off my soap-box. Best, Dr. BILL

hawks. owls. turkeys. poachers. and a partridge in a pear tree. Strange that in 5 pages of discussion no one had tossed up the possibility of over hunting as a reason for less quail. Too many people. Too little habitat.