By Phil Bourjaily

I mentioned in a previous column I had shot up over a box of 3-inch pheasant loads as an experiment on a preserve hunt a couple weeks ago. That ammo was Federal’s 3-inch Pheasants Forever-label “Prairie Storm” magnums which contain 1-5/8 ounces of lead shot at 1350 fps. After a few shots we renamed them “Pterodactyls Forever”* loads. They are deadly at both ends of the gun, and, in my experience, way more shell than is necessary to kill a pheasant.**

However, experience can be deep but narrow. While I have done a ton of pheasant hunting, aside from a handful of hunts in Nebraska and South Dakota, most of my birds have been shot in two counties in Iowa. I hunt alone or in the company of one or two people and we run pointing dogs and/or close-working flushers. I try to be selective with the shots I take. I won’t shoot at a bird going straight away past about 35 yards, for instance. [ Read Full Post ]

By Chad Love

November. 1998. Opening weekend. This is my place. My name may not be on the deed, it may even say “public” on the sign, but it’s mine nonetheless. I’ve purchased it with the coin of time and sweat and shoe leather and blistered skin. And I sure as hell don’t want to share it. Yet here they are, the bastards. Rich ones in their new trucks pulling shiny trailers. Poor ones in rustbuckets with plywood boxes thrown in the bed. And all of them--regardless of social class--here to take what’s mine; what I thought I was jealously guarding by keeping my big mouth shut. Self-delusion: I was born to it.

I drive around the area--my area--and the license plates read like a litany of the dead for what used to be bird country: Alabama. South Carolina. North Carolina. Tennessee. Florida. Kentucky. Virginia. Georgia. Arkansas. Louisiana. Mississippi. The In-state-but-out-of-towners. The Mongol hordes of landless Texans. And me. I want to hate them all for being here, for screwing up my little set-piece dream of solitude and birds and the pup and me and not another living soul under this brilliant bowl of sky. But of course I can’t. Because they are me. He is us. Not enemy, but kindred seekers trying to sate the desperate hunger for a moment when sky and birds and dogs converge into an instant of pure meaning.
[ Read Full Post ]

By Michael R. Shea

With Hurricane Sandy last week and a cold front this week, you’d expect good numbers of Atlantic flyway birds hauling for southern climes. But with a few exceptions, recent weather in the northeast has stalled duck migrations. Geese, on the other hand, are being reported in high numbers from Canada down through the Chesapeake.

“Throughout the Mississippi and Atlantic flyways reports suggest quite slow movement of dabbling ducks south throughout last week with no notable migrations,” the nonprofit conservation group Long Point Waterfowl wrote in their weekly migration report. Long Point uses equations to predict waterfowl migration based on weather (click here to jump to bonus info). Hunters up and down the Atlantic flyway have reported similar drops in duck activity since Sandy.

If the birds hunkered down and stayed local during the hurricane, you’d think this week’s cold front would push them south. Not really, says Long Point scientist Michael Schummer. [ Read Full Post ]

By M.D. Johnson

This week, I’m coming to you folks from Habitat Flats in Sumner, Missouri, and the heart of the Mississippi Flyway. I’ve been here since Saturday, November 3, and while I would consider the hunting nothing less than spectacular, owner Tony Vandemore and his crew are watching the skies--and The Weather Channel—for the next big front to push new birds southward.

“We’ve been killing ducks,” Tony told me as we headed out that first day, “but we’ve been dealing with no wind now for better than a week. There’s weather in the Dakotas, though, and things ought to get good this weekend.”

South Dakotan, Ben Fujan, who guides for Vandemore and drove in from Sioux Falls last night (November 7), speaks of excellent bird numbers to the north and east of Missouri--ducks just poised to start making their way to the Show-Me State and points south. [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

This is me with my first rooster of the year, always a noteworthy event. Almost equally important is this: even though you can see that Jed wanted to jump out of my arms and keep hunting I called my limit one bird and went home. I got back a little earlier than I told my wife I would and had daylight left for some leaf raking.

Having now been married for 29 hunting seasons I can offer this observation: It is not so much the time you spend in the field that leads to disharmony during the fall. Coming home later than you said you would be home is what causes problems. [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

“The only time I ever got my s**t together, I couldn’t pick it up.”—Roger Miller

Packing successfully for a hunting trip is far more important than making out a will which will hold up. If you die and your will is successfully contested, what do you care? You’re dead. If, however, you bring only longjohn bottoms on a hunt and leave the tops at home, you’ll regret it bitterly for a week or more.

Because I’m at the age when I have trouble remembering who I am, much less all the stuff that I have to take along, I’ve developed a system that’s worked pretty well. First, take out all the hunting gear you own. I mean everything, even if it has no place where you’re going.

Second, assemble what you need, and don’t do this by simply slinging it into a duffle bag. Don’t assume that you have patches and gun oil in your cleaning kit. You may have taken them out on the last trip because the TSA doesn’t allow gun oil. Are all your batteries fresh? Have you gained so much weight since last season that, when you button your heavy pants, little purple veins erupt on your nose?
[ Read Full Post ]