I like fine things as much as anybody. I buy good equipment but my Kangaroo Red Wings after one season show I use them. My camo Browning Cynergy took a swim when I was trying to retrieve a Mallard drifting in 35mph wind/waves, sprinting in foot deep mud and waste deep water before it headed a 1/2 mile down wind. The mud was packed in the recoil pad from crawling on greenheads.
I'm no Dash in the uplands man
http://www.hwhproductions.com/dashBios.html
Way too stuffy. The guy IMO belongs behind a cherry wood desk and drinking out of a brandy snifter
I'm more of a Dave Gruber type(rest in peace my friend)
http://wolfcreekinc.biz/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=44
Dave Gruber is what I'm like. Old School..show your ware and tear..ruff around the edges and all business when it comes to making use of every opportunity that a bird presents. It's about putting those special meals on the table, about tradition passed on by my father & grandfather. Working through tough weather, hunting only wild birds, working to scout them weather on public land or private. Getting permission, driving miles and miles a day sometimes. Just chaps my hide to put those who just drive to a location, pay somebody a fee and walk a mowed path. Than call them a hunter like myself. That's not hunting, it's shooting and killing. All for different reason's IMO. I do it for the challenge and tradition. They do it IMO for like most other things in their life. A must drive to take a short cut to out do others. I have a couple of friends who work for a construction outfit owned by their father. They go to South Dakota every year to hunt Pheasants. If you can call it that. They hunt on a preserve. Last year their bill was over $30,000 for their party. The first day of this year they shot 130 birds for their group. They take a van out there and get drunk all the way there. They get hammered every night they are there. That's not what my father or grandfather described to me when they talked about the great hunts they had in years past. They are the people who I see with $1,000 of clothes on. They brag, brag, brag on the hundreds of birds they killed. Like they are some super hunter. Sorry, shooting a bird you had to kick in the ass to make it take flight isn't much to brag about to me. In fact, I think it's about as far from my father and grandfathers hunting as you could get.
I'll stick to my style of hunting. Trust me, my special meal with friends and relatives that consist of the great game birds I earned with hard work and skill are far more appreciated than the forgotten birds somewhere on the bottom of their freezer come next summer when they are cleaning them out. as the wife and kids wouldn't think of eating those birds not from a store..Chicken only family.
onpoint