Pheasant Hunting - England

That's pretty nuts. Blasting them as they fly over you. I might a guy that worked one of those clubs when he was a kid. He was a bush beater! Never let him shoot. That was reserved for the entitled class.
 
Interesting video with a reasonable bag for the members. All predictable high overhead shots that you can get very good at if you have enough chances.
That hunt is just a shadow of the great excesses of the past. King George V shot over 1,000 birds out of a bag of more than 3,000 on one hunt on one day in 1913. His comment to his son after the shoot was,"Perhaps we went a little too far today." Do ya think?
The guys in the video had to load their own guns while in the past the royals had a loader to pass loaded guns to the shooter as fast as he could unload them. A quote from the past sums it up for me and it fits my personal perception of the guys who hunt with 6 dogs with another 10 back in the dog trailer to release when the 6 get tired.

"It has been argued that industrial slaughter on this scale hardly counts as hunting. The sportsman has no chance to pit his wits against the quarry, nor to exercise the skills of venery or woodcraft. The shooter has become a mere marksman."

Here's a description of the old Royal "hunts" that the "hunt" in the video tries to replicate. It truly is wonderful to be rich.:)

http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1179/cou.2013.18.2.004
 
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England

There are a lot of videos like this on youtube and I wasted a good couple hours watching them one evening. Seems more about the tradition and process than the actual hunt itself. I think it would be kind of cool to do one of these just to experience it. Lots of comradery which is one if the things I enjoy most about hunting.
 
More like dove hunting to me than pheasants. The ties and the flag guy are just too funny. Thinking they are pen raised birds. There was a Wingshooting USA episode from Ruggs Ranch in Oregon. Same thing. Guys lined up in a Canyon blasting away as the pheasants flew down the canyon
 
Different place. Different culture. Different tradition.

We have hunts like that for the affluent in America, particularly on the ranches in South Dakota that are run by guides and outfitters.

I started hunting North Dakota in the mid-1990's because of the ample opportunities of quality self-guided pheasant hunting on public land. During those warmer than usual winters in North Dakota of the mid-1990s , we had fields all to ourselves that were packed with birds. Then the word got out.

America is not like Europe with respect to completely constrained hunting opportunities, mostly reserved for the wealthy. At least not yet. But we are headed there. California has been hit hard as land gets locked up by development and viable hunting grounds are paid for with top dollar by guides and outfitters. I have seen western North Dakota change as the guides and outfitters move in. My friends and I now joke that the state flag is the "No Trespassing" sign. And if you call the phone numbers on the signs, or run into the farmer in the bar that posted the sign, they usually apologetically say that the hunting rights are reserved for a guide.

If we continue on this track, someone will be shooting footage of Americans on driven hunts in California or wherever a hundred years from now. If we are still allowed to drive cars and own firearms that is. ;) Makes me realize that the glory days are now, whether I like it or not.
 
Driven game shooting is steeped in tradition and quite popular in England and in certain other parts of Europe in general. Though I would call this "shooting", not hunting. In England they do have a style of hunting that is quite similar to what were used to but they call it "rough" shooting where spaniels and labs are used to flush game birds for the gun.
 
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enzinn said:
Different place. Different culture. Different tradition.

We have hunts like that for the affluent in America, particularly on the ranches in South Dakota that are run by guides and outfitters.

I started hunting North Dakota in the mid-1990's because of the ample opportunities of quality self-guided pheasant hunting on public land. During those warmer than usual winters in North Dakota of the mid-1990s , we had fields all to ourselves that were packed with birds. Then the word got out.

America is not like Europe with respect to completely constrained hunting opportunities, mostly reserved for the wealthy. At least not yet. But we are headed there. California has been hit hard as land gets locked up by development and viable hunting grounds are paid for with top dollar by guides and outfitters. I have seen western North Dakota change as the guides and outfitters move in. My friends and I now joke that the state flag is the "No Trespassing" sign. And if you call the phone numbers on the signs, or run into the farmer in the bar that posted the sign, they usually apologetically say that the hunting rights are reserved for a guide.

If we continue on this track, someone will be shooting footage of Americans on driven hunts in California or wherever a hundred years from now. If we are still allowed to drive cars and own firearms that is. ;) Makes me realize that the glory days are now, whether I like it or not.
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I would have thought I'd written this except I started much earlier and in Montana. :cheers:
 
calamari said:
Interesting video with a reasonable bag for the members. All predictable high overhead shots that you can get very good at if you have enough chances.
That hunt is just a shadow of the great excesses of the past. King George V shot over 1,000 birds out of a bag of more than 3,000 on one hunt on one day in 1913. His comment to his son after the shoot was,"Perhaps we went a little too far today." Do ya think?
The guys in the video had to load their own guns while in the past the royals had a loader to pass loaded guns to the shooter as fast as he could unload them. A quote from the past sums it up for me and it fits my personal perception of the guys who hunt with 6 dogs with another 10 back in the dog trailer to release when the 6 get tired.

"It has been argued that industrial slaughter on this scale hardly counts as hunting. The sportsman has no chance to pit his wits against the quarry, nor to exercise the skills of venery or woodcraft. The shooter has become a mere marksman."

Here's a description of the old Royal "hunts" that the "hunt" in the video tries to replicate. It truly is wonderful to be rich.:)

http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1179/cou.2013.18.2.004
Click to expand...


The American hunting legacy isn't much different.





 
And who could forget the proud "hunters" of buffalo.





Times were different. Americans weren't much different than the English in terms of game preservation. It wouldn't surprise me a bit that the English were way ahead of the Americans in that area, just due to the land constraints.
 
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Good video. That's a tradition that goes a long way back! One I could only hope to experience some day!! I don't necessarily need to shot, just being there to experience the hunt/shoot would be enough.

Also, I can see their birds are flying faster these days too. They had a "heavy" bird issue for some time. They began crossing their stock with Kansas blue-backs and other blood lines for a lighter, faster flying bird. One, from what I saw in the video, seemed to get away more often than he was hit.

Nick
 
Roaniecowpony said:
I would have thought I'd written this except I started much earlier and in Montana. :cheers:
Click to expand...

I think you could substitute any state that had lots of public land pheasant hunting. I know what you mean though.

We always argue around the campfire about the reasons pheasant hunting has been on the decline in California, but in the end, I am pretty sure the foundation of all the problems is too many people packed into our state.

I am here though, and can't move out for a little while longer, so for now i will grab opportunities when I can - quail, chukar, dove, grouse, ducks, geese and pheasants. As others have pointed out repeatedly on this site, chasing after wild dragons on public land in California might be the definition of crazy, but it sure scratches the itch for insanity that we seem to have.
 
Roaniecowpony said:
The American hunting legacy isn't much different.
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Although they all show a lot of dead animals they really aren't the same. The wealthy english royalty bought and maintained large estates for the main purpose of entertaining other upper crust members and themselves with shooting sports. The birds were planted, and raised on the estate and then driven into specially groomed long narrow strips of woodland separated by a grass field from another long narrow strip of mature trees parallel to the strip where the birds were herded. Beaters would then go into the strip with the birds that were confined by flag strips and flush the birds toward the second strip making them have to fly over those trees to where the shooters waited to blast them. The shooter didn't eat all that game they shot and it was mostly sold to pay for the estates upkeep and expenses.
The pictures from the US are probably of market hunters who did it for a living and not just for sport like they did in England and other european countries. It was how some people made a living as opposed to doing it for the pure hell of it.
 
I always believed I'd be a crack shot on driven pheasants since I can hit passing doves pretty well but that all changed when I got the chance and was posted as a blocker in SD. There are varying accounts of how many birds came out of that slough, some estimate 500 and some closer to 1,000 all I know is it was a lot of birds and when the push was done I had shot 12 shells and only folded one rooster.:D
 
quail hound said:
I always believed I'd be a crack shot on driven pheasants since I can hit passing doves pretty well but that all changed when I got the chance and was posted as a blocker in SD. There are varying accounts of how many birds came out of that slough, some estimate 500 and some closer to 1,000 all I know is it was a lot of birds and when the push was done I had shot 12 shells and only folded one rooster.:D
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They are like rockets once they get to speed and with a wind on their ass they are even faster. Up high their tails look tantalizing as you swing the gun. I always seem to manage to stare at the tail and lift my head to admire my handiwork when pass shooting high and fast roosters - with a very predictable outcome of nothing in the bag, of course.
 
Those passing shots are my favorites and the ones coming straight over you I think are the easiest. Lift smartly and when the barrel blocks the bird out, pull the trigger always following the bird you shot at till it lands or disappears. I've had many heart shot birds that you think you miss suddenly just drop out of the sky 2-3 hundred yards away. If you hear pellets hit the bird or see a slight stutter in the wing beats, that's often the result.
 
calamari said:
Those passing shots are my favorites and the ones coming straight over you I think are the easiest. Lift smartly and when the barrel blocks the bird out, pull the trigger always following the bird you shot at till it lands or disappears. I've had many heart shot birds that you think you miss suddenly just drop out of the sky 2-3 hundred yards away. If you hear pellets hit the bird or see a slight stutter in the wing beats, that's often the result.
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Good advice, particularly swinging through. Seems like that advice works for damn near any past hand-eye coordination pursuits of mine - shotgunning, baseball, bowling, even basketball (for shots). With bird hunting, particularly duck hunting, if I get a moment to think about the shot, particularly high crossing left to rights, I screw myself by lifting my head at the end of the shot, which skews my perspective and stops the swing. And of course, thinking about the shot in advance doesn't help much, because I go into downward spiral thinking about it.

Years ago I was duck hunting at Mendota with an accomplished shotgunner, and I was set up in a narrow lane in the tules and missing all the easy left to right teal that were blazing through that day. My friend watched me get frustrated and walked over and told me to look at my shoelaces just before the bird was in range. Voila! I hit the next seven shots in a row.

I just have to not fall into the trap of thinking too much about the shot. Just have to execute what my muscles, eyes and brain already know. Which sounds easy, but can be definitely hard for me.

That was a wee bit off topic, but I would love the opportunity to be standing in England and glancing at my shoelaces just before the rocketing roosters reach the edge of my range as they ascend above the tree line.
 
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