Hunting solo tactics

Limitless said:
whether we talk, remain silent, close car doors, our dogs bark, or Goose's cousin dumps mud loudly. Yelling, or speaking loudly in an animated way, within a hundred yards or so of a bird can make some birds spook and flush wild
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I control the noise I can. Slamming truck doors, yelling at a dog, talking to your partner, etc. Those are all 100% avoidable. The only noise I make is when my shotgun goes off. I don't walk through the terrain like a buffalo coming either.

Anyone who yells "hen!" or "rooster!" with me doesn't come with again. If its a hen, you don't shoot. If a rooster, shoot it. Simple.

I am positive that I do better when I hunt solo because I make less noise. When someone is with me, there is some minor communication on where to go. My results bear this out and the only additional factor is noise. Just the other day when the entire landscape was wet and soft, I was on top of the birds before they knew I was there.

I'm sure I'd still harvest roosters if I wasn't as anal about the noise I made. But I'll never find out because I keep quiet.
 
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I'm tempted to do a hunt where I sing the entire time to show people the being quiet thing (when hunting Pheasants) is an illusion, manufactured in the minds of men.

Would you like Home on the Range, or The Sound of Music?
 
Limitless said:
Not making noise is very difficult for me. I have to walk places to get birds, and since I don't hunt on golf course greens, I make noise walking through the vegetation.

The birds always know we are there, whether we talk, remain silent, close car doors, our dogs bark, or Goose's cousin dumps mud loudly. Yelling, or speaking loudly in an animated way, within a hundred yards or so of a bird can make some birds spook and flush wild. Whether those same birds would have flushed wild or ran when they heard you get close, without yelling, is anyone's guess. Some probably would have, and for others the volume exceeded their sit tight threshold. Unless you are walking on bare ground next to cover, they hear you coming. But your dog better be walking on that bare ground too.

Birds that sit tight or flush wild within range get taken out of the population. By the end of the season, on public land, we are left with a higher percentage of wary birds. And yet, even then, we still find roosters that hold tight or flush within range, depending on the weather and cover conditions. If not, nobody would ever get any birds, late season, on land that has been hunted during the season.

We aren't sneaking up on birds. If we were able to do that, predators, who are much quieter than us, would decimate the bird populations. Mother nature has seen to it that this doesn't happen. They hear predators coming and they hear us coming. Whether birds run, flush, or sit tight, when they hear us coming, is up to them. Whether predators or hunters get the ones who wait it out is up to them.
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I do sneak up on birds when there is a nice wind and by being quiet. When I know there are going to be birds, I remain silent and keep my dog at heal. This has bagged many birds that others would not have got to. The ones who like to yell "rooster", drink beer, talk, etc. will argue otherwise. But I bag a way more birds than most every other hunter, especially late season when no one else seems to be shooting very many. That's why I like the late season. It weeds out the weak hunters.
 
gimruis said:
I control the noise I can. Slamming truck doors, yelling at a dog, talking to your partner, etc. Those are all 100% avoidable. The only noise I make is when my shotgun goes off. I don't walk through the terrain like a buffalo coming either.

Anyone who yells "hen!" or "rooster!" with me doesn't come with again. If its a hen, you don't shoot. If a rooster, shoot it. Simple.

I am positive that I do better when I hunt solo because I make less noise. When someone is with me, there is some minor communication on where to go. My results bear this out and the only additional factor is noise. Just the other day when the entire landscape was wet and soft, I was on top of the birds before they knew I was there.

I'm sure I'd still harvest roosters if I wasn't as anal about the noise I made. But I'll never find out because I keep quiet.
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I learned back in the 70's and 80's that parking next to where I hunt equals less birds. Parking 1/4 mile away makes a huge difference. They will hear the truck door, tailgate, and dogs getting out of the truck and spook or be ready to spook. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a foolish hunter. The difference between a predator and man is that a predator has to catch the bird. Man just needs to be within 50 yds.
 
I know that not everyone here also hunts deer or wild turkey, but someone told me this a few years ago in relation to upland hunting: would you make noise walking into your deer stand or turkey blind in the early morning darkness? Clearly, no. You go silently and slip in as quick as possible to avoid detection.

Treat pheasant hunting the same way.
 
Limitless said:
Not making noise is very difficult for me. I have to walk places to get birds, and since I don't hunt on golf course greens, I make noise walking through the vegetation.

The birds always know we are there, whether we talk, remain silent, close car doors, our dogs bark, or Goose's cousin dumps mud loudly. Yelling, or speaking loudly in an animated way, within a hundred yards or so of a bird can make some birds spook and flush wild. Whether those same birds would have flushed wild or ran when they heard you get close, without yelling, is anyone's guess. Some probably would have, and for others the volume exceeded their sit tight threshold. Unless you are walking on bare ground next to cover, they hear you coming. But your dog better be walking on that bare ground too.

Birds that sit tight or flush wild within range get taken out of the population. By the end of the season, on public land, we are left with a higher percentage of wary birds. And yet, even then, we still find roosters that hold tight or flush within range, depending on the weather and cover conditions. If not, nobody would ever get any birds, late season, on land that has been hunted during the season.

We aren't sneaking up on birds. If we were able to do that, predators, who are much quieter than us, would decimate the bird populations. Mother nature has seen to it that this doesn't happen. They hear predators coming and they hear us coming. Whether birds run, flush, or sit tight, when they hear us coming, is up to them. Whether predators or hunters get the ones who wait it out is up to them.
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When I hunt alone, I am very quiet and have success and can easily convince myself that it was because of a stealthy attack. When I am with a group, we are way to noisy in my opinion, but it is what it is and we also always seem to have success.
This weekend I hosted an annual father/son (my daughter came even joined us this year) hunt with 1 of friends, his 2 boys, their uncle and me and my son & daughter. It is the only time each year that we get together as they live across the state. It was warm out, no wind and we made "lots" of noise! We shot lots of pheasants most all of them came up at close range! We ended up with 24 bagged birds in less than 6 hours of hunting and many of these came up behind us. This tells me the noise we made from the comradery and heckling didn't affect our hunt and we likely walked past more than we will ever know. I prefer hunting in silence, but I am not ever going to expect it from the group as I don't really think it changes the outcome.
 
Lots of great advice, I agree that being silent and hunting at your dogs pace are critical to being successful when your alone. I never hunt the same place twice using the same approach, ever. Pheasants seem to learn quickly.
 
Curious whether the silence is golden crowd has silencers on their shotguns? Or do you leave the property after the first shot, since it would clearly have scared all the birds away?

Some information for your consideration. We'll use the low end of 150 db for the shotgun, even though a hot magnum 12 gauge load might be over 160 dB. We'll use 90 dB for human yelling/shouting. World record for a woman scream is 129 dB and a man is supposed to have reached almost 145 dB. But those are record breaking screams, not normal human shouting. Also good to know that a car door slamming is about 90 dB too.

The dB scale is logarithmic, so a difference of 10 dB is 10 times louder. That means the 150 db shotgun blast, which is 60 dB louder than normal human shouting, is literally 1 million times louder. However, I'll be fair and point out that human hearing perceives each 10 dB as about twice as loud. That means 60 dB would be perceived as a measly *64 times louder* (2x2x2x2x2x2=64). Although various animals may have different sensitive to different frequencies, we'll assume pheasants perceive sound volume level differences roughly the same as humans (unless someone has proof otherwise).

As you can see, even if we shout, we can't come close to the noise level produced by a shotgun blast. How is it that we can shoot at multiple birds at different locations on a single property if bird flushing and running is primarily driven by heard sound levels? Could it be that sound volume levels don't play a significant role in whether the average bird runs or flushes? Could it be more a factor of learned behavior from previous exposure to hunters (being pressured), desire to stay warm and cozy, or a miscalculation that we will pass them by, or belief they can avoid us by flushing even if we get close, or whether other birds are flushing around them?

I'll be objective here and point out, again, that shouting might push a bird or two over the edge. We all know you can sometimes prompt a flush of a bird that is holding tight in front of you by shouting. We also know that even though a cackle might be a sign of distress by a bird forced to flush, it also serves as a warning to other nearby birds, causing some of them to flush too.

The topic of this thread is about getting close to pressured birds on public land. I do believe that shouting might lose you a jumpy bird within 100 yards or so. I don't know whether they would have left when you got closer anyway, since to they *do* hear you walking.

But this idea that you should be absolutely silent, and that it will get you more birds, just isn't logical. You can't be quiet walking through December cattails or even in wetland grasses. You certainly can't be quiet walking through crunchy snow. And you can't keep all animals for miles around from hearing your shotgun blasts. Talking at a normal volume is not going to be any different than the constant sound you make when walking. The birds have hearing acuity that is attuned to approaching predators. There is no way to sneak up on them, unless you can move like a cat and take 10 minutes for every 10 yards you cover.

They are making a calculated decision, based on a combination of natural instincts, past experiences, weather and cover conditions, and which side of the bed they woke up on, which is unique to each bird, whether they are better served fleeing or hiding. It isn't a matter of whether they hear you, since they do -- it is a matter of whether they think you are going to get them or not if they hide.

If you hunt a pointer, and the pointer is stalking, I'd recommend not shouting, since you don't know how close the bird is. They do know you are there, but quiet talking and the noise of walking through the cover isn't making a difference here. A loud noise, in that situation, could push a bird over the edge before you get as close as you'd prefer. If you are hunting a flusher, learn their body signals when they get birdy. If they get birdy, get closer to the dog as soon as possible. The closer you and/or the dog get to the bird, the greater the chance they will flush. That's the main driving factor here.

Everyone is free to use whatever legal strategy they want. It would be boring if we all did things the same way. However, I'm not going to promote this idea passed down through the generations that if you are quiet, you can sneak up on pheasants, in cover. Pheasants don't act like deer and they don't even act like turkeys, despite being related. I also don't think it is a particularly healthy thing to drill into a young hunter and get so worked up over.

So to all you young hunters out there, don't worry about being extra quiet. The birds are hunted 24x7 by all manner of beast and know when a predator is approaching. We humans can't compete with those animals, hence the need for dogs and shotguns. Have fun, don't take things too seriously, and get your buddies and significant others involved in hunting. We need more of you out there.
 
Just try to control the noise you can control. Obviously some noises are out of your control (like the boom stick mentioned above). If you are in a group it will be much tougher than solo, which is one of the reasons I usually hunt solo. I can control me.
 
Bob Peters said:
⬆️Thumbs down. Talking, blabbering, and loud beeper dog collars put the birds on high alert. Use the wind, walk softly, and carry a big boom stick.
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I will admit that I prefer GPS collars and orange on the dog to beeper collars. Not so much because of the effect on birds, but the constant beeping does get a bit annoying to me. I haven't noticed it causing birds to flush prematurely when I have hunted with people who use them, but I also don't have that many hunts done with that equipment.

When Ace, my springer, was in his first year, I took him out ruffed grouse hunting in a large state forest. It was warm out. He was running hell bent for leather. But since he didn't have the endurance yet, he would get tired and hot and lie down in the woods, where I couldn't see him. I thought I was going to have to leave him out there, but he finally got up after half an hour.

After that, I got a collar that can be set to make noise when the dog is moving and stop making noise when they stop. It could also be set vice versa. I set it to make noise when he stopped. Of course, by that time, he had his endurance and it wasn't an issue.

The collar had half a dozen different sounds it could be set to. At least one of the sounds was a bird of prey, screeching. The theory was it might make a bird hold tight if they thought there was an airborne predator nearby. No idea if that is true, but that is what I set it to the few times I used it with him. :)
 
Well hell! I sincerely hope all of the loud hunters on this site are hunting just adjacent to where I’m hunting. I need all the help I can get and a few extra birds pushed my way by folks coaxing their dogs and BSing with each other doesn’t hurt my chances.
 
gimruis said:
Just try to control the noise you can control. Obviously some noises are out of your control (like the boom stick mentioned above). If you are in a group it will be much tougher than solo, which is one of the reasons I usually hunt solo. I can control me.
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I like to think I am in control of me too. I hope my wife doesn't join this conversation, because she will say I am out of control and it's my mother's fault! :p
 
Limitless said:
I'm tempted to do a hunt where I sing the entire time to show people the being quiet thing (when hunting Pheasants) is an illusion, manufactured in the minds of men.

Would you like Home on the Range, or The Sound of Music?
Click to expand...
I think being quiet does help,but I just can't.My dog barks
 
gimruis said:
If you are able to, approach the parcel/piece from the opposite direction as everyone else. Pressured birds are used to approaching danger from the same direction, over and over.

I'll echo what has also already been stated. No noise whatsoever. Full stealth mode. When a rooster gets up, shoot it. If a hen flushes, don't be the moron who yells "hen!" and lets every bird in the countryside know you're there. The only noise you should be making is the blast of a shotgun.
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Yeah yelling hen is bush league.
 
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