Duck Hunting photo
SHARE

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.

I am lucky to live where leasing is not a strong waterfowl tradition. I can walk in and hunt ducks on a public area for free (I do get what I pay for: the hunting isn’t very good, but the price is right). Still, I have some very good free duck hunts with nothing more than a 5-gallon bucket, a bag of a dozen decoys, waders and a pump gun. I hope that is still true everywhere, although I fear it may not be.

*When Benelli first introduced its Performance Shop line a couple of years ago, I mocked them in print for trying to sell $2500 semiautos in the midst of a global financial crisis. The Performance Shop guns have sold very well. Benelli was right, I was wrong. Shows what I know about selling guns. Also, they are good guns. I shot the Performance Shop turkey SBE a couple of years ago, which comes tuned to shoot Federal Heavyweight 7s. The patterns were frighteningly dense.