Stan, I have taken many limits of Dove and ducks in my life. It is a goal but not measure of my day like it was when I was younger. If I can swap a full limit, for just helping a young shooter have a good day I am just as happy. Many late season limits are as much about fine shooting at difficult birds as anything else. You do not kill 15 late season Dove, pass shooting, with wind to assist the birds without a lot of effort. A full limit opening day is child's play in comparison. But if I have had a good day at 10 then that can be my self imposed limit just as well. Or one perfect shot can be a limit in itself. That 50 yard finishing shot on a bird leaving the field to die UN-recovered in the woods. Slow movements, perfect line, perfect lead, perfect shot placement and quick bird recovery by my dog can be a perfect day in one long event.
I grew up hunting an area I could take three legal limits of quail by driving from one state to the next. 16 was the highest aggregate legal total I remember. I could start out on my cousin farm in Delaware, then move ten mile away to any number of farms in Maryland and finish 20 miles away in Virginia. We could take four in one state and six each in the other two. Just had to tag birds to keep limits separate for the game wardens. As a teen I did that once and decided volume was not everything.
I watched invited guest hunt our farms and take two limits and think nothing about it. When I informed my father what they did, he would just not invite them back again in most cases. One fellow, he did allow back, was a special case. Today we would call it PTSD, in those days we said he had a bad war. We made sure Mr. Ed had a place to hunt, by himself, at least once a year. I would handle the dogs and take him right to the best coveys we had. He would take his two limits and act like he was a kid again. It was 20 years after his passing before I understood my fathers point in letting him have that feeling again. My father, Mr. Ed and I were all wrong, but in hind sight I do not care that much. Mr. Ed had a hard, short life, did what he did in the war, came out a vastly changed man and never had the life he ought to have, had the war never happened, only to die by age 50.
