What we had in my family when I was growing up were two .410 single shots. When I graduated from being a paperboy to working in a service station, I saved my money and bought myself more firepower: a Savage OU 420 in 20ga. The OU part didn't stick, but 2 barrels and 2 triggers did. Rather than watching my dad shoot roosters out the window of the car, I preferred walking the road ditches and acting as both dog and gunner. Dad thought it was kind of odd, but I didn't grow up in the Depression like he did.
The other typical method of hunting pheasants in Iowa back then, mid-50's and going forward, was for a platoon or so of hunters to work the drive and block operation on corn that hadn't yet been combined. If they had a dog, it was probably a Lab with which they hunted ducks. If it didn't run too far ahead in the corn, it might have helped them. If it did chase birds as they ran down the rows . . . well then, the blockers at the far end got some shooting. Pheasants were also eventually chased into road ditches, where hunting was legal as long as you kept a safety distance from buildings inhabited by either people or animals.
It was not until Uncle Sam was kind enough to send me to Morocco for a couple years, where I hunted Barbary partridge with a group of hunters who were mostly other embassy staffers who had dogs. Some of which were pretty good. Coming home to finish grad school, I had a Brittany that was much better on quail than he was on pheasants. (He had little patience with birds that ran.) But he was a very good retriever. And if they didn't run, he would point them. I shot my first quail, ruffed grouse and woodcock over that dog. All without leaving Iowa. I really enjoyed hunting with pointing dogs, and have had a lot of them since then. I lucked into a few very good ones, but most were at least average, and certainly helped me and my buddies more than they hurt us. I mostly helped their development simply by taking them hunting a lot for a variety of birds.
Once I had dogs, I didn't do much ground swatting anymore and always remembered to tell new hunting partners not to shoot rabbits, for fear that a dog might have been in the way.
Even if birds aren't as plentiful as we'd like, it's a grand sport we have. And I've been fortunate enough to have successfully made some compromises that have allowed me to do a lot of it. And thanks to forums like this one, as well as books and magazines, I've learned a lot more about classic shotguns. And for more than 40 years, I wrote about the dogs, the birds, and the guns in a variety of magazines. Finally gave that up this year, figuring I'd done enough of it. I'll continue to share and learn in places like this.
