doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Ground swatting.

While we are discussing morals and ethics of game bird shooting, how do y'all feel about working hard as one can to take a daily limit every time you're out? Any problem with that, or do some feel it is greedy in some way?

Lots of gray areas there too Stan, but there is nothing wrong with killing your legal limit in most cases. A good State Game Management agency sets reasonable legal limits based upon the resource. However, it can be taken to greedy extremes in some circumstances. I used to work with a guy who had some great dogs, and was a devout pheasant hunter. My co-workers who had hunted with him warned me that he would needle me or anyone to find out about farms that had a good pheasant population. They said if I ever made the mistake of giving away my hot-spots, he and his brothers would go there and relentlessly keep returning until the population was decimated.

A lot of land in the vicinity of my house is posted (including my own) simply because the local Amish Dutch are much the same, and keep coming back with dozens of shooters and drivers until an area is cleaned out. They also take it a step further by being well known for poaching, exceeding bag limits, and hunting on land without permission. I've thrown a number of them off my property after I watched them cross a barbed wire fence only a few feet from easily visible posted signs. All of my non-Amish neighbors know they have permission to hunt my land, on the condition that they tell any Amish they see to get the hell out. I admire them for hunting hard, but you won't find many non-Amish land owners or hunters who are happy to see them.

I didn't know how they were until after I bought my land. I gave permission to one Dutchman down the road to hunt, and it was OK at first. Then he stopped by one day and said he was hunting on my land with his cousin, and they noticed I had a lot of what they called hickory canes (saplings an inch or so in diameter). He asked me if it would be OK for his cousin to cut some, because he had a business making hickory rocking chairs. He said that if I allowed him to take some, he would make me a hickory rocker. We took a walk through the woods, and he showed me what he was interested in. I noted that there were many that had two or more saplings bunched together, and told him I would be OK with him taking the smaller ones out of a group, but to please leave the nice straight single saplings and also leave the largest out of any group of two or more, to grow into mature hickory trees. He agreed to that, and I was happy that he would be thinning out excess trees, and I would also get an Amish made hickory rocker out of the bargain.

A few months later, when I was back in there doing some hunting, I noticed that virtually every hickory sapling had been cut down. Where there had been plenty of shagbark hickory saplings, now it was difficult to find any at all, except for the small stub of the cut off trunks. Oh, I never got my damn hickory rocker he promised either. The next time I saw John a few months later, I told him that he and his cousin and the rest of his clan were no longer allowed on my land, and I wasn't nice about it.

An unethical hunter probably isn't very ethical in most other matters either. Sadly, they often ruin things for other hunters. There's a story behind every parcel of land that gets posted. Someday, I'll tell the whole story of how the Amish prompted me to post mine.

In open country, one can easily estimate it at three hundred yards if you aren't used to the distances. Big mulies a thousand yards away, seem close when they're in the middle of miles of cut hay. Try putting on a sneak, or good luck finding a trail to set up a stand.

Personally, if that's what someone wants to do, I think it's perfect. There are many times I don't push to take a limit, but I get the thought more and more as I get older. Someday, I'll look back and not be able to do it anymore. Oh well, got a couple of sunflower fields I'm gonna swing by on Monday.

Depends on the species and what you're going to do with the birds. Back in the mid-80's I spent a lot of time hunting a very large (by Iowa standards) farm that was nearly all in CRP. And it was surrounded by farms that were nearly all in crops. It was a real pheasant magnet. There were about a dozen kids in the farm family, and they liked pheasants. I gave them a lot of birds. Also had a neighbor at that time who was a part time butcher/part time preacher. I gave them birds as well. They weren't hunters, but they raised chickens so didn't need much instruction in cleaning pheasants, although I did tell them they could skin the pheasants rather than plucking them. Late 80's into the 90's, I taught French at Iowa State University. The French Club put on an annual French banquet for the faculty and students. They approached me about shooting rabbits for them. I told them I didn't shoot rabbits, but said I could give them pheasants. They were ecstatic.

About 25 years ago I built a 15X20 foot deck on the back of my house. With a roof. I really worked my tail off on it. Gold rope trim around the top. Nice siding along the walls. Coach lamps. I got it all stained and I was so proud. The next thing I know here come the doves. Crapping all over the place. Every day there would be 25-30 doves walking around. I couldn't get rid of them. I'd open the door and slam it and they would fly off. But 1/2 hour later, here they would be back again. I got a large sheet of plastic and covered the deck- thinking the wind blowing up and down would keep them scared off. They just kept flying in a landing on the plastic and kept crapping all the more. It was finally BB gun time. I started popping their heads off. It didn't take long before I had a freezer full of dove. I told the guys at my club about it. One said that there wasn't much sport in that. I said, I knew that, but It kept them from making such a mess on my nice new deck. I see them in the yard today and I still remember that.

Could that have been a little violating?

Not on my property. I'm the self-appointed Mayor of my neighborhood.

My 2 cents. My bird hunting partner and I follow very strict self imposed rules and ethics in the field. They are the credo in which we go afield. we predominantly hunt Grouse and Woodcock

1. ground swatting. unless its to feed your family, no way. we dont need to hunt to eat.
2. if we down a bird we search with our dogs for 15-20 minutes usually. If we dont recover, we will move on and come back around later and work the spot again in hopes of recovery. and recovered or not, that bird is included towards the legal limit. with only 3 woodcock per day, that doesnt leave much!
3. if we shoot at a bird and it looks like a hit, and we dont recover it, we include it towards our daily limits. we hunt with dogs and in some of the covers we hunt, its pretty thick and even the dogs aren't 100% even if my Field bred Spring is about 98% good on finding birds down. His Spinone will mark and find but doesnt normally retrieve.
4. daily limits? we dont go for limits. we go for the experience of working the dogs. we eat what we kill but its not about numbers. I dont keep a tally of my birds or flushes or retrieves by my dog. Not interested in numbers.
5. hunting shows. I loathe them. The whole high fives, looking at the camera and the fist pumps and exaggerated visceral reactions to killing a big buck are too over the top for me. I dont see the respect for the animal. I know that when I kill a buck, its reflection time. I sit in awe of the animal and admire it for a bit. the "last bite" as practiced in some European countries is a fitting tribute to the animal. Save your hooting and hollering for the Football game.
6. shooting animals at long range. If thats your thing maybe. but from my 53 years of big game hunting experience ( I am 66); I dont see that many hunters who actually practice at those ranges. and most of them dont have range finders and guesstimate the range after they have killed what they killed. I have heard too many personal anecdotes from hunters about the deer they sht running, through the brush, 400 yards away. all bullshit. but if you can accurately hit the vitals of a deer at 500 yards, and shoot a caliber with sufficient energy to make a humane kill at that range, maybe but nor for me.

I think each hunter has to live with their decisions and their actions/conduct. I know what my ethics and standards are.

Once heard of a guy who would mount a shotgun out in his field, to a fencepost and when I deer walked through the gate, the deer would hit a trip line and shoot itself.