Today’s first course is crow in a figurative sense:

I have long insisted that the best waterfowl guns weigh a lot --  eight pounds or even close to nine – for  adequate recoil absorption. I believed they should have long barrels – 28-inches or even 30 --  and weight-forward balance.  I have said so in print many times.

I was wrong. Waterfowl guns can be long and heavy, but they can be short and light, too.

This summer, I bought a barely-used Benelli M2. A 12 gauge, it is 6 pounds, 14 ounces, with a 26-inch barrel and slightly butt-heavy balance;  everything I supposedly dislike in a waterfowl gun.  And I love it. I’ve been hunting with it since our duck season opened last week and leaving my 8 ½ pound, 30-inch barreled BPS in the gun cabinet. The M2 rides lightly slung over my shoulder when I’m burdened down with decoys; the shorter barrel and butt heavy balance haven’t yet prevented me from killing nearly every duck I’ve shot at.  With reasonable loads – 1 ¼ ounces of shot at 1450 fps – it doesn’t kick too badly.  A light, compact waterfowl gun can be a joy, and I was wrong ever to say otherwise.

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Recently I literally ate some crow, too, as in, I cooked and ate one. See photo.

My friend Mike killed the bird while we were duck hunting.  I had never actually seen a crow shot before and the idea of leaving it in the field bothered me, so I brought it home along with my ducks.

I had always been curious about eating crow. My copy of “Cooking Wild Game” by Frank Ashbrook and Edna Sater states: “ . . . some strong champions of crow meat are coming to the front with proved claims of its excellence. They state that unwarranted prejudice alone prevents many sportsmen from hunting them with an eye or thought to their table qualities.” I should note that “Cooking Wild Game” was published by the US Fish and Wildlife Service  in 1945, to encourage consumption of wild animals of all kinds (up to and including opossums*, sparrows and skunks)  to free up beef, pork and poultry for the war effort.

I breasted the bird, yielding two small medallions of red meat. I marinated them in Italian dressing overnight, then broiled them rare with some pepper jack cheese melted on top. It was really quite good. The meat was very much like duck, but tenderer .  Unfortunately, no matter how good it was, I couldn’t quite get my mind past the fact that it was crow meat.  I doubt I’ll do it again. But, I satisfied my curiosity, kept the bird from going to waste, and did my bit to smash the Axis, even if it was 64 years too late.
 
* ”Opossum with Tomato Sauce” and “Opossum Stuffing” are just two of the tempting recipes in the opossum section

Some of you expressed disappointment that the new Beretta A400  -- billed as a dinosaur gun -- turned out to be a mere 3 ½ inch 12 gauge.  While I think the A400 should be a dandy gun for ducks, geese and pheasants, it is admittedly on the light side for one-shot kills on larger sauropods. I would want more gun. In fact, I would want one of these.

Here is a picture of Beretta’s real dinosaur gun, which I saw during my tour of the factory. It has a bore of 40mm (1.6 inches) and shoots about a pound of shot. Berretta made lots of punt guns like this one for local use on nearby Lake Garda, some with bores up to 53mm (just over 2 inches). This gun and boat date to the 1940s.

The idea of punt gunning is to sneak up on rafted ducks and geese in a low profile boat and shoot the flock on the water at about 40 yards with a lot of shot from a very big gun. This video shows you what a punt gun can do to a bunch of balloons:

Most punts have a single sculling oar that sticks out the stern, allowing you to lie down out of sight and paddle one handed. This one has three sets of oarlocks for rowing around the lake. Then, when it’s time to pull a sneak on a flock rafted ducks, the crew lies down and turns the cranks (you can see one just behind the breech of the gun) that drive two little propellers in the stern. The drive system reminded me a little of the Civil War submarine Hunley, albeit a little more refined.

It should be noted that Lake Garda, like any large lake in the world, is said to be home to a lake monster, probably some type of pliosaur.  I think a pound of shot upside the head would permanently discourage the largest marine reptile, don’t you?

That’s me with skeet shooter Chiara Cainero at dinner in Brescia, Italy. She is holding her gold medal from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which she won in a three-way shootoff in the rain.

Cainero shoots way better than she speaks English, and I shoot better than I speak Italian (which is not saying much), but we were still able to talk about how she trained to deal with Olympic pressure.

She shoots only 100-300 rounds a day, which is low for an elite shooter. But, she told me she does lots of visualization. Visualization lets you practice without ever picking up a gun. You picture yourself at the range, and imagine setting up for the target, going through your pre-shot routine, calling for the bird, seeing it, and making a good move and crushing it. The more detail you can work into your mental images, the more effective your mental training becomes.  Visualization conditions your mind and body to perform, even in the heat of a three way shootoff on your sport’s biggest stage.

Visualization is an important training method and top athletes like Carineo take it very seriously. It’s much more than merely daydreaming about hearing your national anthem with a medal around your neck.

 “When I visualize, I think about shooting in the Olympics. But I don’t think about winning,” she said. “I think about breaking targets in the Oympics.”
Evidently  it works.

My friend Walter sent me this picture a while back from the Iowa State Fair. The fair is perhaps best known for the life-size butter cow and other butter sculptures* but you see all kinds of neat stuff if you wander around the exhibit halls. Walter spotted this trap-table in the 4-H hall. It won a blue ribbon for Marc Fullerton of Nora Springs in the Science, Mechanics and Engineering category and is solid evidence that 4-H still supports hunting, shooting and other wholesome activities.

It’s a pretty cool project. Two trappers can sit side by side on the picnic table seat. The cutout in the middle holds a cardboard box for empty hulls, and there are four padded barrel rests on each end of the table.
Congratulations to Marc and to 4-H.

*this year’s controversy: PETA** and right-wing groups sided together to successfully oppose a butter Michael Jackson. The conservatives disapproved of Jackson’s morals, while PETA wanted the statue made from margarine.

**Speaking of PETA and Iowa, I note with here with, perhaps, misplaced pride that when PETA mascot Chris P. Carrot visited a Des Moines school several years ago to promote vegetarianism he was attacked by a mob of children. They stuffed beef jerky into his costume, then chased him back to his van, hurling bologna at him and chanting “F*#%  PETA! We love meat!”