Yellow shells

In the beginning there were reds, greens, blacks, blues and even an occasional purple. Whatever was in the box, and often whatever was cheapest.

There was one gun in the closet, a 12 gauge, and it served its purpose well. Anything with wings got the business end of it. The pump action never jammed and I lugged it through fields and swamps and woods and prairies through all seasons. We were inseparable.

And then came the lure of two barrels. Too many magazine articles, too many pictures of a man and his dog and his gun and that gun wasn't a pump action 12 gauge. For some reason I just had to have one, couldn't possibly be complete without one.

So pennies got socked away until a decent Browning came into the picture, a lighter gun than the 12 which seemed like a fringe benefit at the time. Part by chance and part by design this smaller gun took only one color.

Over a period of years it became the gun that gets the call on nearly every outing. It was lighter, easier to tote all day, and when a shooting slump came along it emerged as the franchise player. Ducks and turkeys, on the rare occasions they are the main event, still demand the bigger stick. But for all else the pockets are filled with those yellow shells.

And now we are, for the most part, inseparable, although I've heard that once you try a 28 you'll never be the same.

A little help please..

I try to avoid re-posting stuff from other bird hunting blogs. It's their creative blood and sweat and you should visit their blogs, not mine, to get it. But this morning I read a post from Greg McReynolds on Mouthful of Feathers that was a bit different.

About a week ago Greg left his gun at a parking spot in Idaho, and this wasn't just any gun:

http://mouthfuloffeathers.com/2014/10/26/lost/

Most of the people who read my blog also read MOF, so there's some redundancy here. Given the circumstances I hope you'll forgive me. If you came upon Greg's gun and you're an honest soul, I don't blame you for picking it up and keeping the dishonest at bay while you figure out how to locate its owner. Now you know who it belongs to, though, and it's time to get it home.

The (almost) Dream Job

Saw this post on the Orvis News site a few days ago and thought I'd pass it along in case anyone out there has what it takes:

http://www.orvis.com/news/hunting/could-this-be-your-dream-job/

Looking at this job description I have the organizational and managerial side licked. Where I fall woefully short is knowledge of fine shotguns, and I'm fairly sure this would be tough to fake. Not sure the wife would be too excited about winter in VT either.

There's always the question of whether something you do for entertainment would be remotely entertaining if it was your job. Opinions - and experiences - on this vary. Years ago I spent a season guiding at a hunting preserve on weekends, figuring it would be a great way to keep the dog in shape and make a little pocket change. In short, it sucked. What I learned is that there aren't many people who like to hunt the way I do, and the money didn't - couldn't - come close to masking that.

Doesn't mean the job is wrong for everyone, though, and there's someone who's gonna love spending his days talking to people about shotguns and getting paid for it. If you need a field tester, you know where to find me.

Agendas

"What's the gun range?"

"It's where you go to shoot guns. Wanna go?" It was a longshot but worth the ask given the difficulty in throwing clay targets to yourself.

"Mmmm...okay." Score.

Excessive misses during the season suggested a change of routine during the down months. Don't call it a New Year's Resolution, more of a commitment to make an attempt to get a little better. After skipping March, April and most of May for no good reason it was time to at least make the effort.

The effort was a bit unorthodox. He's not quite big enough to cock the thrower, at least not without risk of it springing back and cracking a wrist or taking out his lower set of teeth. So the routine went something like cock, "okay put a target in", "keep your hand off the lever", "I said keep your hand off the lever", walk 15 yards off to the side, shoot, walk back to thrower, repeat.

Truth be told it was probably better practice than round after round after round from an electronic thrower on the skeet range, the philosophy being that birds typically don't come floating into the field on command at precisely spaced intervals in places outside of Argentina.

He would've stayed all day. At that age there must be some never-experienced feeling of power at heaving a disc 75 yards through the air with barely the touch of a finger. He's really in a for a treat when he gets to turn that disc to powder with the same finger.

Better still from the shooter's perspective, every time a target broke he clapped. Not out of sarcasm, not because someone told him to, just untainted sincerity. A fan club of one is all you really need.

Two guys from the same gene pool, one living purely in the moment, the other leveraging the moment on a practical basis for what's behind door #3, but starting to wonder if he didn't already get the prize.

And Now We Shall Do Manly Things

If there's one thing I enjoy in any memoir it's candor.  Speak to me honestly, don't put on makeup, give me the real you.  A writer who displays his own shortfalls unapologetically and without casting blame, placing all that he isn't out there for the world to see has my respect. As I read Craig Heimbuch's recent release, And Now We Shall Do Manly Things (not just a clever blog post title), I found all of the above woven into a tale about a man wrestling with the tribulations of manhood as he takes up bird hunting.

Heimbuch's quest begins when his father gives him a 12 ga Winchester, more in a "Here's something pretty cool" way than an ill-disguised prod to go hunting. Curiosity gets the better of him and the result is a year-long chronicle of discovery, missteps, perseverance and self-realization.

A journalist married to a schoolteacher raising three young children, he is consumed daily by a job, paying rent, and the endless challenges of parenthood.  Here is a guy who doesn't have hobbies or passions as much as he has roles: employee, employer, provider, husband, father, fixer of all that breaks.  "Life is too much about compromise," he notes, a sentiment painfully familiar to many of us. For Heimbuch, hunting evolves into a departure from an existence devoted mainly to the well-being of others.

The story is funny, at times laugh-out-loud funny, without seeming silly or contrived.  The simple truth of lines such as "like our toys, pheasant were imported from China," kept a smile on my face while an extremely witty, albeit fictional, exchange between Ted Turner and Mark Zuckerberg had me spitting milk through my nose.

"Hello, Ted?  Hi, it's Mark Zuckerberg."

"Who?"

"Mark Zuckerberg.  I created Facebook."

 "Look, if this is one of them cults or Amway or some other foolish thing, I don't want any and Jane don't live here no more."

The relatively one-sided conversation continues with Zuckerberg intent on shooting one of Turner's bison and Turner, well, just being Ted.  Heimbuch possesses a well-grounded sense of humor and never falls into the trap of taking himself or the story too seriously.

The book offers a somewhat sobering glimpse into the declining number of hunters, one extending beyond the loss of habitat and the urbanization of America.  Heimbuch experiences the difficulties facing a guy who hasn't grown up in the sport but would dearly like to give it a try, the closed doors and skepticism encountered by a grown man who wants to hunt.  Were it not for several accommodating relatives this book might never have happened.  Our sport is one that's difficult to figure out on your own, at least before you grow tired of getting skunked and give it up for something less cryptic.

Oddly, the father who gave him the shotgun and who is an avid lifelong hunter only plays a peripheral role in his son's passage into the shooting sports.  We're left to wonder whether this was intentional or merely bad luck on the calendar, but Heimbuch leaves little doubt how much he wanted his father included.

I learned of this book through an email from TLC Book Tours who subsequently sent me a copy and included this review in a month-long virtual tour.  At 324 pages it's an easy read and one any bird hunter would enjoy.  George Bird Evans or Datus Proper it's not, nor is it meant to be.  It's a modern story that most guys can relate to, and fortunately it happens to be about wingshooting.

Aromatherapy

Last weekend it rained.  Again.  How this still qualifies as a drought I can't understand, squishy as the ground is nearly everywhere.  According to NOAA, however, we have improved from Extreme to merely Severe status. Whatever.  We were stuck inside.

The only real blessing I find in days like these during hunting season is the opportunity to get slightly caught up on what unavoidably gets neglected from September to the first of March.  Cleaning, fixing, moving, touching up, throwing out and the general repair and maintenance of the nuptials can eat up a weekend in no time.  After I let the dogs back in I sat down for a minute, taking a break from the domestic gulag to catch up on some reading, and was immediately overcome with the smell.  Unmistakable, overpowering, thick enough that it ought to be visible.  Wet bird dog.

I can understand why some people, especially non-dog people, would find it less than appealing.  It's not exactly perfume or potpourri and I doubt Glade will be incorporating it in their lineup this year but it's not altogether repulsive either.  Dew-soaked mornings, dips in a puddle or a creek, rides home when the inside of the truck smelled of nothing other than damp dog fur.  This never turned me off.  Sometimes it lingered for a few days and I'd get to enjoy it on the way to work.  I can never recall, not even once, rolling down the windows or otherwise trying to cover it up.

I have a closet full of scents that fit the same bill. The bottle of Hoppes No 9 in my cleaning box is as unique as anything in there.  The fact that it's a solvent can't be denied and it will open your eyes if you get too close.  From working distance, though, it almost has a sweet smell to it.  Apparently enough people felt the same way that Hoppes now offers air fresheners.

When I pull out the No 9 and the barrels for scrubbing I get a faint whiff of the leftover powder.  It smells exactly like the gunpowder hanging in the air after the first trigger pull on opening day, sharp, announcing with its presence the beginning of a new season.  By January or February you don't notice it as much, but after a long summer it floods a nose.  Powerful stuff.

The tincloth of my Filson vest has an aroma all its own.  As do my gloves which, like any really good gear, have a story.  When I was maybe thirteen or fourteen I saw an ad in a magazine for authentic Marlboro Man gear.  Shearling coat, cowboy hat, boots, vest, the whole works.  The deal was you sent in empty packs of Marlboros as legal tender. Everything in the ad was many cartons' worth, the shearling coat priced at a good decade of any chain-smoker's pleasure.  But there was a pair of leather gloves for the occasional, only-when-I'm-drinking smoker, maybe twenty or thirty empty packs.  And I wanted them.

As luck would have it my dad worked with a dedicated Marlboro patron who gladly contributed to the cause and in about 6-8 weeks I had my gloves.  Normally the stuff you get in these giveaways is worth less than the empties you trade for it and falls apart in a few months, junque in the classic sense.  These, however, may go down as the deal of all time. Thirty plus years later they're still at it, not a tear, not a crack, not a loose stitch anywhere. It's gonna be a sad day when that first chink appears.  All well-worn leather smells distinctive, far different than brand new, and each individual piece more distinctive still.  I could pick these out of a lineup blindfolded.

As potent as these scents are, even more so are the memories tied to them.  Instant, uncontrollable recall kicks in as they tickle the olfactory wires.  Hundreds all at once and strangely each one is good.

Rain, rain go away.  But don't take these smells with you.

This takes more patience than I'll ever have

Gun engraving is an art that sparks mixed emotions from me.  Unfortunately it's usually found on guns that populate a higher price range than those I'm familiar with (desire).  At times it seems a bit impractical given the normal use of its medium (bewilderment).  Even the most pedestrian examples are beautiful (awe).  And it requires a skill that takes years if not decades to master (more awe).

While reading the latest issue of the online magazine Sporting Shot, I stumbled across a link to a blog by engraver Keith Thomas.  He's far from prolific on the posting side - I think I counted eight over a five year stretch - but it's interesting to read his perspective.  And the work is simply extraordinary.  I poached the image below as a tease..

There are more examples of his work in the Sporting Shot article.

Free Boone & Crockett membership

The folks at the Boone & Crockett Club in partnership with Hornady ammunition are working hard to spread the word about current attempts to ban all lead in hunting and fishing.  While there are readily available alternatives in both sports the
uncomfortable fact is that they are more expensive, in some cases ridiculously so.  If such a ban were implemented I'd have to take out a loan to go dove hunting.

The animal rights activists masquerading as environmentalists have their work cut out for them given that there is no scientific evidence to support a blanket ban on lead in any activities where it is not currently prohibited (waterfowling).  That hasn't stopped them from lobbing lawsuits at every government agency in arm's reach, however, the latest target being the EPA.  Imagine that.  What goes around comes around, I guess. 




What you as a wingshooter can do is contact your representatives in Washington and voice your support for S.838, the Hunting, Fishing, and Recreational Shooting Protection Act. You can read a summary or the full text of the legislation here.  The short version is that the Act clarifies the EPA's jurisdiction over certain sporting goods, conveniently excluding lead ammunition and fishing tackle from their authority.

In appreciation for your support and for taking the time to learn more about the issues at stake, B & C and Hornady are offering one lucky reader a free Boone & Crockett Club Associate Membership.  Leave a comment below and you're automatically entered.  Wit and wisdom are always appreciated but given that this will be a random drawing these won't earn you any favors with the selection panel, which incidentally is composed of my four year old and my six year old, neither of whom has any idea how to rig a drawing anyway.  Drawing will be held just prior to bedtime on Monday, October 24th.

Hope

Regardless of which brand you choose to practice, religion is a very personal thing.  You tend to get out of it what you need most, or whichever need led you to it in the first place.  In an age where people are losing jobs and homes, where random acts of violence proliferate, where the future sometimes holds more troubles than joys, possibly more than any other thing religion provides a source of comfort in a world of uncertainty, a sense of hope that good will prevail.

Hope offers a reason to keep going, to put troubles in perspective or at least aside long enough to let them fade.  Hope is the promise of tomorrow, and bird hunters know a thing or two about it.  Every puppy, day in the field, hedgerow and shotgun shell is hope.  Putting on a vest, easing up on a point, squeezing the trigger - every little action is pinned to hope.  In it you'll find optimism, reassurance, relief, contentment and a dozen other emotions shifting the burden of worry aside.

Not every Christmas present comes wrapped in paper under a tree.  Whatever your religion, find the hope that it offers and embrace it.


Merry Christmas....

Wrapped and under your tree

The problem with podcasts is that there are so dang many of them out there that it takes an immense amount of effort to find the ones that are worth your while.  Unless of course you just stumble into them, which is how I found the Orvis Double Barrel Podcast.  Hosted by Brett Ference, Orvis hunting product developer, the series is a casual discussion on various topics centered around wingshooting.

Most of them run 20-30 minutes and they're a great way to make use of time that might otherwise be spent doing nothing.  I listen to them in my car on a weekly commute I make to the lower part of the state and I've also used them to pass the time in a deer stand.  I suppose you could partake in a waiting room if you don't mind being seen in public with earbuds.  Whatever your fancy I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Topics range from gun maintenance to hearing protection to shooting technique, choke selection, and one on getting kids into shooting sports.  There's an excellent four-part series of interviews with Mike Stewart of Wildrose Kennels.  For many of the episodes Brett recruits in-house talent in the form of Bruce Bowlen, head of the Orvis shooting school, and Jordan Smith who's been Orvis's gunsmith for the last 30 years, infusing the discussion with unique perspective and expertise.  They're constantly looking for new topics, too, so email your ideas.

Orvis does have a bit of a reputation as being geared toward the higher end (dollar-wise) of the sporting spectrum, so before you write this off as great advice for lottery winners and trust fund babies only, take it from a guy who shoots a left-handed 870:  this is for the everyman.  Admission is free and you aren't required to give them your email address or answer any surveys. 
 
I'd recommend subscribing to the feed through a tool like Google Reader or iTunes.  The website doesn't update as rapidly as these services and at least from my experience it's been easier to download the podcasts to my phone.

As much as I'd like to send a gift-wrapped Purdey or a Parker to everyone who's kind enough to read this blog, this double barrel will have to suffice, at least until I am one of those lottery winners.  Hope you enjoy it...

PS - There's also a podcast for fly fishing.

I went to see the doctor...

After agonizing over my abysmal performance with a shotgun this season (see previous post), I broke down, did a little research and scheduled some time with a shooting instructor.    A well-credentialed guy (Dan Schindler, for those who are curious) lives not far from me and was available on fairly short notice, lucky for me I suppose.  Credentials aside, he turned out to be just what I was looking for: friendly, knowledgeable, methodical and patient.  And he honestly seemed to enjoy what he was doing.

Over the course of the next three hours and several hundred rounds I learned a couple of critical things.  Apparently I'm pretty good with the quick point and shoot, widely known as the Churchill method.  I've never had much trouble hitting a quail on the covey rise or a pheasant getting up out of standing corn and this was confirmed on the target range.  Turns out that this method loses its effectiveness once you get out past 25-30 yards, something I can vouch for and have the empty shells to prove.  So went spent a lot of time working on those passing shots, the kind that tend to dominate the latter part of dove season.

Seems my biggest problem was that I had gotten in too much of a hurry.  We spent most of the session working on slowing down my whole process, literally every part of it from mounting the gun to acquiring the target to firing and follow through. You hear it a lot in professional sports: split-second timing is everything, and the only way to control it is to slow it down in your mind.  I honestly never realized I had so much time to make a shot.  Once I got used to this simple fact the targets started dropping like flies.

So how did all this translate in the dove field?  Mixed success on the first day out.  The difference was that I knew why I was missing.  There are a lot of adjustments between target range and field and this is the part that's left up to me.  Dove rarely come out of the trees at the same place over and over at the same speed.  You're constantly adjusting to a new shot - low, high, slow, fast, behind, from the side.  Still, any doubt that these changes would work was erased when I saw a dove crossing about 45-50 yards out, put the gun on it, swung with it, eased away and pulled the trigger, and watched it drop.  This was a shot I was never comfortable taking because of the distance and here it had worked just like it was supposed to.  I have to say that pride tastes a lot less like crow than I thought it would.

The Yips

I've heard my golfing friends talk about it.  Suddenly, for no explainable reason, a guy can't hit the ball like he used to.  Can't putt, can't chip, drives go onto the neighboring fairway, whatever.  There's an accident on the neural highway somewhere between brain and beef and there's a casualty.  Worse still, you have no idea where the accident is or how to clean it up.

This always seemed puzzling to me.  How can you do the same thing you did yesterday and not get the same result?  Just doesn't make sense.  Keep in mind I'm not a golfer so all I see is guys who spend hours on the range fine tuning their stuff to the point that it really should be automatic.  They become consistent 3 or 6 or 8 handicaps, respectable performers, and then one day they can't break 90.  I'd understand if they were recovering from hip surgery or a broken arm, but when nothing changes?  I just didn't get it. 

Until it happened to me and my shotgun.  As I sat in the field Sunday morning filling the sky with lead, I couldn't deny that the boxes of shells were emptying much faster than my game bag was filling up.  Had this always been the case I wouldn't have given it a second thought, but not too long ago things were different.  Last season I had a mix of good days and stellar days, at least in terms of how many shells I consumed to get a limit of doves (currently 15 per day in my neck of the woods).  Where a box used to be more than sufficient, now it was pushing two or more.  It finally hit the tipping point on Sunday, the point at which I couldn't call it an "off" day any longer.  Off days only last a day.  This was stretching halfway into the season.

I honestly have no idea what changed.  Eliminate any mechanical issues with the gun and any physical issues with me and you're left with something between the ears.  More than likely I'm thinking a little bit too much about the shot and shooting behind, not swinging through, lifting my cheek from the stock or something equally ruinous.  And no surprise, these things are all difficult to self-diagnose.  So here I sit feeling fortunate that my family doesn't depend on my shooting prowess for sustenance but otherwise generally in a funk.

The fact is that I'm either going to have to plod through this until it corrects itself, which it eventually will after months or years of frustration and having no idea what the problem was will likely reappear further down the road, or I'm going to have to break down and get some help.  I've never taken a shooting lesson in my life, which is actually a pretty lame argument for suffering through a slump indefinitely.  Not to mention that I generally don't like to pay money for something that I ought to be able to do myself.  The reality of the situation, though, is that I can't fix it myself or I would have.  And the reality is that unless I get some help I'm going to be miserable doing the one thing that brings me great joy.  I'll let you know how that pride tastes going down.

The 8th Deadly Sin

Gun lust.  It's not exactly one of the seven deadly sins but it ought to be.  Some guys have auto lust, some have power tool lust, some have rod or reel lust.  In the end they're all cheaper than good old fashioned lust but only by the smallest of margins.

Lust is not something to be denied.  It's genetic after all, pre-programmed into us to preserve the species.  Without the primal physical attraction of one gender to the other we'd all just coexist until we died out, barely more than flashes in the pan of evolution.  But migrating to something so practical, so utilitarian, so genderless as a weapon seems contrary to all of Darwin's notions.  It just can't be natural...

Graceful curves, elegant lines, warm to the touch, gentle pull.  Or how about smooth action, rugged type, or more than a little kick?  Whatever your type she can catch your eye and the mind soon follows.  Attraction precedes obsession and is followed by rationalization and when you hit rationalization, you know you're in deep.

Fortunately, gun lust can be written off as "collecting" or "pursuing a hobby", even to the point of becoming an aficionado.  At any level it's entirely socially acceptable.  As time wears on, stricken hunters become serial offenders as they tend toward more guns and more specifically, more-specialized guns.  Like a woodworker who can always find an excuse for a new tool the hunter eventually feels a need for turkey guns, duck guns, quail guns, pheasant guns, upland guns, wetland guns, fast-shooting guns and even beautiful guns while at the same time acquiring choke sets for each of these so that it can potentially be used in place of the others.  Never forget that at its core lust is an emotion, and emotion trumps logic every time.

Possibly this is why each of the Deadly Sins is considered deadly.  If logic prevailed, such vices would be turned away at the door and we'd all live long and innocent lives, temptation-free and pure as spring water.  And boring as hell.  Vive la épice of gun lust.