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  • May 22, 2012

    Should Young Hunters Start With Deer and Turkeys?

    by Phil Bourjaily

    Here’s me, on the set of the Gun Nuts TV show, holding my pick for the ideal youth turkey gun: a 20 gauge 870 Express Jr. with a red dot sight.

    It is short, light, doesn’t kick much with the right loads, and it’s easy to hit with. My younger son shot his one and only turkey with it, and I have since taken it from him and killed turkeys with it, too. While you don’t have to put a $500 Zeiss Z-point on a kid’s gun, I think some form of red dot sight (and a lot of target practice before the season) is the best way to be sure a kid doesn’t miss.

  • May 17, 2012

    Good Turkey Gear: Primos Pocket Hen Decoy

    by Phil Bourjaily

    Mostly, I am of the school of thought that it’s best to make a turkey come look for you rather than put out a decoy that might make him hang up or even walk away. Nevertheless, I always have decoys in my gamebag just in case I am staking out an open field, especially late in the season when hens are not interested in going to toms. This year I used the new Primos P.H.D. (pocket hen decoy, about $55). It’s an inflatable hen with a non-shiny cloth photoprinted skin that shows iridescent feather detail.

  • May 16, 2012

    Turkey Hunting Tip: Have a Backup Plan

    by Phil Bourjaily

    Today’s tip: Have a backup plan, and have a backup to your backup plan.

    This morning’s Plan A was to hunt a gobbler I found earlier in the week. The season is almost over and the wildlife area I hunt has been deserted for days so I was very surprised to find the only other vehicle on 6,000 acres parked at my spot this morning. So much for Plan A.

  • April 30, 2012

    How the Public Sees Hunters

    by Phil Bourjaily

    There is a small percentage of the U.S. population that hunts, and a small percentage that hates hunting. While many of us believe the general public looks on at hunters with disapproval, the truth is, most of them rarely think about hunting at all.  

    When they do think about it, the non-hunters I encounter believe two things:

    - We are crazy for keeping the hours we do and going out in the cold.

    - Hunting is okay if you eat what you shoot.

  • April 26, 2012

    Turkey Hunting: Sometimes It's Better To Be Lucky Than Good

    by Phil Bourjaily

    I have written a lot of how-to turkey stories over the years, but I generally ignore my own advice. Instead my personal approach to hunting boils down to: sleep late, get lucky. This morning I actually woke up at 4:30 a.m., thought about getting out of bed, then decided against it. It’s not that I don’t like getting up in the early morning, it’s that I hate feeling wiped out later in the day when I do.

    So I left the house at the crack of 6:30 a.m. As an afterthought, on my way out the door, I grabbed a new mouth call from the box where I store the calls sent to me by manufacturers to try. I had noticed yesterday the ones in my vest were starting to fall apart and thought I should add a new one.

  • April 13, 2012

    Trap Shooting Tip: Look at the Bottom Edge

    by Phil Bourjaily

    I have given a lot of shooting advice to a lot of high school kids on our trap team in the past four years. If you threw out 99.9 percent of what I’ve told them, trap can be boiled down to two things: “Keep your head on the stock” and “focus on the bottom edge of the target.”

    The former is obvious, since we have all been told forever that your eye is the rear sight of a shotgun. The latter, however, works wonders, and it surprises me every time it does. Looking at the bottom of the target should be wrong because trap targets are rising. But from what I have seen, far more targets are missed over the top than underneath. For whatever reason, people who don’t lock their eyes onto targets usually miss over the top.

  • April 12, 2012

    A Brief Rant On Mounting Shotguns

    by Phil Bourjaily

    Last weekend I took a National Sporting Clays Association class for my Level I instructor certification. It was a wonderful experience, I learned a ton, and I’ll be writing a column about it in the magazine in the future.

    However, since this blog space is supposed to contain “rantings and ravings” let me take the only complaint I have about the class and run with it. We did not learn to teach students how to shoot from a low-gun, unmounted start. Sporting Clays--once called “Hunter’s Clays”--used to be about hunting practice, just as skeet (another game that has abandoned the low-gun start) was. American sporting clays rules now allow a premounted gun as in trap and skeet. Unless you shoot international skeet or FITASC which do require a low-gun, there is no need to learn how to mount a shotgun.

  • April 9, 2012

    Good Shotguns: Winchester Super X3

    by Phil Bourjaily

    It has taken a while, but Winchester’s Super X3 semiauto has danced its way into my heart. I was a fan of the hefty, retro-styled X2. When Winchester lightened it, gave it a makeover (an ugly makeover IMO) and called it the X3, I was underwhelmed.

    I was also wrong. The X3 is a winner.

    The particular model of Super X3 that changed my mind is the Sporting Clays version. Winchester sent me one on loan to review a year ago for Best of the Best for 2011. It was high school trap season at the time and I gave it to a girl on our team who was struggling. Her scores went from single digits to low 20s. Since then I have used it as a loaner for several kids and everybody who picks up the X3 shoots it well.

  • March 13, 2012

    Is Waterfowling Becoming America’s Sport of Kings?

    by Phil Bourjaily

    At SHOT I ran into my friend Mike who works for a maker of game calls and accessories of all kinds. I asked if there was anything new in duck and goose calls. “Waterfowl sales are soft,” he said. “Having a duck lease costs a lot of money and not many people can afford it anymore. Waterfowl is getting to be our own little sport of kings here in America.” I had just come from the Benelli booth, where I saw the new Performance Shop Super Black Eagle II.

    It’s an already expensive gun with enough aftermarket barrel and choke work done to give it a $2900 sticker price. Yes, that is a lot of money for a semiautomatic shotgun. And yes, the first run of 600 had already sold out.*

    So, while affordable duck calls like the ones Mike’s company makes aren’t selling in huge numbers, at least 600 people in the United States apparently have money to spend on a high-end waterfowl gun, and, I assume, a lot to spend on their waterfowl hunting in general. Waterfowling has always attracted the wealthy, but there used to be room for the regular guy in the sport, too.

  • March 9, 2012

    Shotgun Tip: What to Look at When You Lead a Target

    by Phil Bourjaily

    My video post about how to shoot crossing targets provoked confusion, discussion and disagreement on the subject of exactly what you look at when you lead a target. Do you look at the target while the gun moves in front of it, or do you look down the rib somewhere in front of the target?

    Both methods have their proponents.

    Some believe you have to be looking down the rib the correct distance in front of the bird when you lead a target because the only place a properly mounted gun will shoot is where you are looking. Nash Buckingham, famous outdoor writer and equally famous long range shot, said that when he shot a crossing duck he imagined an invisible moving spot in front of it and shot at that. That’s as concise a definition of the “look in front” theory as you’ll hear.

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