Lesson learned..again....

T

tomt

Active member
im sure that we all have one of " those" days, mine was Wednesday morning. dang, how many times do I have to relearn this lesson? Went out with my 12 year old lab and started getting into birds, 7 in a row flushed and missed and one butt shot and kept going. The first 3 or 4 i laughed off, then after I wounded the one , itstarted getting to me. My lab was doing pretty damn good, considering the dry conditions but I wasn't holding up my end of the deal. Although it was my first day in the field for pheasants, I ve been grouse and duck hunting for the past two months and have been shooting fairly well. The next bird flushed out of a ditch about 15 feet from me and instead of snapping off a quick shot, which I was doing all day, I took my time, realized that the gun didnt feel right, slipped it off my shoulder bone back to where it was supposed too be resting and dropped the bird dead. The light came on!!! Why hurry? Roosters getting up arnt really going that fast yet. I was hurrying my shot and with the 60 degree weather, had about 3 layers less on than I had been hunting ducks with for the past month, causing me to screw up mounting the gun. Took that extra second each flush after that, adjusted the stock placement and Didn't miss another bird for the remainder of the day and only the first one missed the morning of the next (hurried that one:eek:) readjusted and did pretty good until I had enough of the wind and left in time to hit Thanksgiving with family. 5 birds in the vest...Thank god that the roosters kept giving me enough chances to figure it out.
Before heading out again, it's back to the clays:rolleyes:
 
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Glad you figured it out.

I missed a couple of shots on Wednesday as well. I was wearing my head mounted GoPro camera and watching the video afterwards I saw that I was shooting at the birds and not leading. Putting that into my internal programming will fix my problem. :laugh:
 
Epic advertures

Birds flushing everywhere and only one shy of a two day limit. BUT only becasue of a minor hitch in the shooting technique. ;)
Me and the britt will be out this coming week and I'm looking forward to all that action. We likely will limit out by 10am :confused:
 
tomt said:
im sure that we all have one of " those" days, mine was Wednesday morning. dang, how many times do I have to relearn this lesson? Went out with my 12 year old lab and started getting into birds, 7 in a row flushed and missed and one butt shot and kept going. The first 3 or 4 i laughed off, then after I wounded the one , itstarted getting to me. My lab was doing pretty damn good, considering the dry conditions but I wasn't holding up my end of the deal. Although it was my first day in the field for pheasants, I ve been grouse and duck hunting for the past two months and have been shooting fairly well. The next bird flushed out of a ditch about 15 feet from me and instead of snapping off a quick shot, which I was doing all day, I took my time, realized that the gun didnt feel right, slipped it off my shoulder bone back to where it was supposed too be resting and dropped the bird dead. The light came on!!! Why hurry? Roosters getting up arnt really going that fast yet. I was hurrying my shot and with the 60 degree weather, had about 3 layers less on than I had been hunting ducks with for the past month, causing me to screw up mounting the gun. Took that extra second each flush after that, adjusted the stock placement and Didn't miss another bird for the remainder of the day and only the first one missed the morning of the next (hurried that one:eek:) readjusted and did pretty good until I had enough of the wind and left in time to hit Thanksgiving with family. 5 birds in the vest...Thank god that the roosters kept giving me enough chances to figure it out.
Before heading out again, it's back to the clays:rolleyes:
Click to expand...


5 birds in the vest ......?
 
Yep, two days, five birds eventually slipped into the back pocket of the vest. With all the doom and glume I heard from friends who hunted earlier in the month (and too many posts on this site), I wasn't expecting much. However, started to find birds in "dirty corn" that just was taken out of CRP. It takes a few years for all the grass to die when plowed under and my buddy had relatives who just took half of their grass out of the program. Farmers across the road didn't though (huge expanse of mature CRP) and those birds would feed in my friends corn and stay due to the thick cover. sadly for my friends family, the corn wasn't harvested due to the drought. These tracts Ended up as a couple of little more then waste high, weed filled standing corn fields with nice numbers of birds. The most birds though were found in a couple of big shelter belts and one large ditch surrounding other friends harvested wheat and corn stubble. Corn was irrigated and the ditch had a couple of seeps with enough water that my lab could swim a bit. Much appreciated in that heat. been hunting co plains since 1979, seen a lot of years worse then this one from the point of view of numbers of birds. This is a bad one for my friends who dry land farm but what they lost in corn they did very well in wheat. To
Summarize, try hunting the dirty corn and roosting sites close to irrigated fields, knock on doors,
 
"how many times do you connect on your second shot? For me, very few. Looking back on The last trip, I shot 15 times at 8 missed birds and 5 times at the 5 birds I ended up bringing home. It makes sence that I wasn't hitting the second shot if my gun wasn't mounted correctly, hence the need to figure out and rectify the "minor hitch" in my shooting technique. When ever I'm having one of those days, whether on pheasants,grouse or ducks, it's usually something minor I'm doing wrong, never the gun or the dog or my hunting partners.
 
This keeps getting better and better...

The first post describes dry conditions which turn into heavy crp cover, overgrown corn with seeps a dog can swim in. If you're home in time for thanksgiving, that's 1.5 days of hunting, during which time you flushed 13 roosters and fired 20 rounds.
How many of you have flushed 13 roosters and fired 20 rounds this entire season?
Internet hunting beats the heck out of the real thing. Just my opinion.
 
Wow....

Wow, little Britt Boy cracks me up. It’s rare to find, in fact I don't think I have ever before read, posts on this forum that display such a high degree of rudeness and ignorance. Sadly, its obvious that bBOY has neither the manners or ability to, over many years, grow the personal relationships and friendships needed to have access to a variety of private land plots to complement the excellent public land opportunities we have in Colorado. Although my first impulse was to shrug this ridiculas diatribe off as the ramblings of an immature arse, it did have the positive result in giving me the motivation to figure out how to post pictures off of my cell phone. My apologies for the quality of the pictures, I take them for my own benefit and rarely feel that they are good enough to share. Notice the scum in the seep(which was about 30 feet long by 10 feet wide), it is not moving water. The pic of the birds were taken on Wednesday, one can just make out the shelter belt in the background. I was physically done by mid day the following day and just got back on the interstate without taking pics of the days birds.Those of you who were actually out there on Thanksgiving morning know how hard the wind was blowing.
It will be interesting to see if BBoy has the maturity or class to apologize, I'm willing to bet....not.... Although people can surprise.

http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j437/tichy21/willieinditch.jpg

http://i1085.photobucket.com/albums/j437/tichy21/willierio11-20-12.jpg
 
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I for one enjoyed your story. I love the guys that show up here unannounced and start to make friends. They don't seem to hang around very long. Good hunting. I enjoyed the picture of the old lab having fun.
 
...ignoring that which deserves ignoring...
I too enjoyed and could relate to your post. I keep a hunting journal, and at the end of every entry I have an "*" to signify "what I learned today"... It's become a running joke how often I have written "less clothes, more lead" in that spot after a day of pheasant hunting! My major problems were snapping off a very rushed shot at the flushing bird (usually under or behind), and then not leading enough on the second. This year, I was out with a guy who had been having a lot of trouble connecting and he was getting kinda frustrated. So I told him to LOOK at the white neck-ring and lead THAT, so as not to get confused by the roosters' long tails. The next time the dog put a bird up I actually yelled out "LEAD THE RING" instead of "Rooster!". He did, and he folded the bird. Now I've started saying that in my head and it's been going quite well. Turns out that once in a while, you should take your own advice.
-Croc
 
Please accept my profound apology....you were right!

Last sunday me and my britt (sam) were east of idahlia at daybreak. Found a quarter section of heavy crp surrounded by corn, milo and sunflowers. Two minutes later sam was on point. I move up to flush the birds and roosters started coming up all around(at least 50). I put by trusty citori to my should, checked for any minor technique glitchs and dropped the first bird. Just as I sqeezed off the second round a rooster flew into the line of fire and I dropped two with one shoot. Since it was only 8am, we headed to st francis. Pulled in to buy a license and found they were giving them away that day. As I filled out the paperwork, a farmer came up and asked if I needed a good place to hunt. He told me to go east, then north until I crossed the republican river. We headed out. Got to the bridge only to find the river swollen out of it's banks, do to the recent heavy rains. I wasn't sure of the bridge holding but being a manly man I crossed anyway. Just as I got out of the truck on the other side, the bridge washed out! Sam and I headed into the chest high cover, literaly fighting our way thru. Sam locked up on point and birds started flushing everywhere. I dropped two, opened the breach, reloaded and the birds were still coming up. Dropped two more. By the time I ejected the spent hulls, sam had all four birds at my feet. Must have been at least 100 birds that flushed. Since it was only 9am, I decided to go for a triple play and headed north. Just as we crossed the nebraska line, there was a guy pulled over on the side with a big sign that read "hunters please help". Turned out the guy farms 4 sections north of benkelman. The birds were so thick on his place, they were eatin up all his corn before he could harvest. I headed north following the conviently located signs he had put up. Once there, we headed into the field. Maybe 30 yds into the field sam went on point. 200 roosters flushed. I raised my trusty citori, check for any minor technique cliches and dropped two birds. I started to reload, but a late flusher came up about 10 yards to the right and flew directly at me. All I could do was stick the butt of my gun out to keep him from hitting me. The bird flew right into the stock, breaking his neck. He fell dead at my feet just as sam returned with the two rosters I shot. As we got back to the truck, with our third limit, a red F150 with south dakota plates pulled up. Turned out the guy had the same problem as the nebraska farmer and came down to try and get hunters to come up to his place and thin out some birds. I told him the broncos were playing and I needed to get home. He said he understood, but I could see the tears running down his face as we drove away. Got home at halftime and the wife had a case of beer iced down to the right of my recliner and a fatty roled up on the end table to the left. I drank beer, smoked pot and watched the second half while my wife cleaned the birds. Just as the game ended, with a broncos win, two of my wifes super model friends showed up and we had an orgy.

A bad year; sadie? Me ???? you've got to be kidding ;)
 
brittboy said:
Last sunday me and my britt (sam) were east of idahlia at daybreak. Found a quarter section of heavy crp surrounded by corn, milo and sunflowers. Two minutes later sam was on point. I move up to flush the birds and roosters started coming up all around(at least 50). I put by trusty citori to my should, checked for any minor technique glitchs and dropped the first bird. Just as I sqeezed off the second round a rooster flew into the line of fire and I dropped two with one shoot. Since it was only 8am, we headed to st francis. Pulled in to buy a license and found they were giving them away that day. As I filled out the paperwork, a farmer came up and asked if I needed a good place to hunt. He told me to go east, then north until I crossed the republican river. We headed out. Got to the bridge only to find the river swollen out of it's banks, do to the recent heavy rains. I wasn't sure of the bridge holding but being a manly man I crossed anyway. Just as I got out of the truck on the other side, the bridge washed out! Sam and I headed into the chest high cover, literaly fighting our way thru. Sam locked up on point and birds started flushing everywhere. I dropped two, opened the breach, reloaded and the birds were still coming up. Dropped two more. By the time I ejected the spent hulls, sam had all four birds at my feet. Must have been at least 100 birds that flushed. Since it was only 9am, I decided to go for a triple play and headed north. Just as we crossed the nebraska line, there was a guy pulled over on the side with a big sign that read "hunters please help". Turned out the guy farms 4 sections north of benkelman. The birds were so thick on his place, they were eatin up all his corn before he could harvest. I headed north following the conviently located signs he had put up. Once there, we headed into the field. Maybe 30 yds into the field sam went on point. 200 roosters flushed. I raised my trusty citori, check for any minor technique cliches and dropped two birds. I started to reload, but a late flusher came up about 10 yards to the right and flew directly at me. All I could do was stick the butt of my gun out to keep him from hitting me. The bird flew right into the stock, breaking his neck. He fell dead at my feet just as sam returned with the two rosters I shot. As we got back to the truck, with our third limit, a red F150 with south dakota plates pulled up. Turned out the guy had the same problem as the nebraska farmer and came down to try and get hunters to come up to his place and thin out some birds. I told him the broncos were playing and I needed to get home. He said he understood, but I could see the tears running down his face as we drove away. Got home at halftime and the wife had a case of beer iced down to the right of my recliner and a fatty roled up on the end table to the left. I drank beer, smoked pot and watched the second half while my wife cleaned the birds. Just as the game ended, with a broncos win, two of my wifes super model friends showed up and we had an orgy.

A bad year; sadie? Me ???? you've got to be kidding ;)
Click to expand...

wow, same thing happened to me, twice, earlier this season.:cheers:
 
Tom? Let's just move on. :)

I've had times when I couldn't even hit the AIR with my shotgun. Ended up taking the recoil pad off (it was a new, used, sxs) and returning to my former skill level. You're right, settling the stock in and telling yourself to slow down may be the key to all the successful experienced hunters. Pheasants are fast, but not THAT fast.

Nice work.
 
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