Virginia is one of several states that still has a ban on Sunday hunting, but the Virginia Board of Game and Inland Fisheries did its part to try and change that. At its June meeting, the board passed a resolution supporting Sunday hunting – which appears to be all they can do: The ban on […]
Plus: Grouse Permits Underway, Youth Bird Hunts The length of Utah’s upland season is now extended – though the UT DNR hasn’t yet posted what the extension is and says it’s only for “most of Utah’s upland game species.” The number of birds and bunnies you can have in your possession has also increased, though […]
Just like it sounds in the headline – Garmin Ltd. is buying Tri-Tronics, a little consolidation in the dog gear world. Here are some details from the press release. Check them out, leave any questions for the companies in the comments section and we’ll get them asked next week. > Garmin announced that one of […]
Last month we asked for your thoughts about designing the ultimate ruffed grouse shells (plural). Based on those comments (thanks!) plus ones in a shotgunworld.com thread we started, we wanted to update things – from our perspective, of course. In no particular order:
Looks like known pheasant species number somewhere above 30 – apparently the experts disagree on the exact number, or at least websites do…. Not sure if anyone has hunted ’em all, or whether you can, or how other species run or flush, but here are five pheasant species that mostly look too garishly colored – […]
We like to hunt. To us that means getting out there and walking (hard), seeing some birds fly, putting some of them on the ground. That’s equally true whether we’re hunting without a dog or over a dog. As we say in Serious Grouse Hunting, Book 1, a dog is only as good as where […]
We received an email from a Serious hunter the other day which stated the following. Give it a read, and let us know where you come down on it. I [bought and] patterned a CZ-Upland Hunter what with unsatisfactory results. I then set it up on a bench rest with sandbags. My shotgun patterned the […]
by Jay Brendan has a Lab pup, so he’s cast his dog vote. Me, I’m still undecided. My head’s spinning with all the breeds, all the recommendations, all the just plain love this or that hunter has for this or that dog. Today I had a long, very educational conversation with grouse dog master Dick […]
In a recent blog post, Bob St. Pierre at Pheasants Forever asked whether the preseason pheasant forecast influences whether we all hunt. A good question, one that led to more questions, like: > Do counts of any kind (e.g., drumming) influence whether or where you hunt? > Should they? > Do these forecasts do more […]
Ernest Hemingway lived when there was such a thing as a “playboy outdoorsman.” Sounds fun, but part of living that life is having a good-sized ego. That means rivals, like Zane Grey, but also a competitiveness that goes beyond buying the first beer or maybe having to fix the grub that night at camp. And […]
How do you keep your Serious birdin’ spirits up in the summer months? Well, besides spending time with the dog, smacking some clays and trying to stay in shape, for us there’s…trip-planning. If you’re lucky enough to hunt right outside your door, or close to it, great. But many of us have to jump […]
The answer for growing more ruffed grouse is the same for all gamebirds: more habitat. No secret there. And in the case of grouse, that means cut trees. Cut ’em! They’ll grow back! And in the meantime, grouse and basically everything that lives in a forest will benefit. But that’s not as easy nor logical […]
We wear a lot of adventure-type clothes. Stuff made by Patagonia, SmartWool and those kind of manufacturers. Not cheap but works so much better than the vast majority of clothes oriented to hunters, much of which are not for ACTIVE hunters (they’re for tree-hangers). When you’re hunting all day actively, you want to wear stuff […]
Recently Field & Stream and Quail Forever blogger Chad Love wrote a fascinating post about training a dog to hunt bird preserves. You might think your field-trained dog would be all that and a bag of chips at a preserve, and you may be right when it comes to bird-finding – but there’s more to […]
Would you? Probably not, unless maybe it was the only one you had and the birds were daring you to get out of the truck and hunt. How about pink brush pants? No? Well then, how about hunting with a poodle?
by Jay A section header in our grouse book is “Forget Everything You Learned in the Clay Sports,” except the mount. That keeps coming back to me when I read shooting tips emailed to me from shotgunlife.com. They’re great tips (some of them), but in a hunting context they’re downright laughable. Examples:
We’re in the process of designing our own shells for ruffed grouse. “Designing” doesn’t mean the engineering parts since neither of us is a reloader. It means the specs. Why are we doing it? Hunters can find upland shells and pheasant shells – and even shells designed for the different clay disciplines – but no […]
A few years back, Jay transferred a sweet Rizzini 16ga O/U from one Cabela’s gun room to another, and Brendan went along to take a look at it. When Jay got it in his hands, it became painfully apparent that he didn’t take a good enough look at the photos because the gun had two […]
We’re still amazed – literally – that the New England cottontail rabbit is a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act. The cottontail freakin’ rabbit! Okay, not the similar eastern cottontail, but still. And what’s the issue? Apparently people – including people we all know – think it’s “cruel” or “ugly” to cut trees. […]
“Where were you?” “Behind.” We’ve said that to each other on sporting clays courses and in the field more times than we care to remember – “behind” as in behind the bird. If only we had 20 shots and tracer rounds so, like members of our esteemed armed forces, we could walk the rounds into […]
Just read this article on hunting ruffies in MN this year. So much of it, while well-intentioned, is wrong. Here goes: > The good news is, counts were up 34 percent this spring in parts of northern Minnesota. Counts remained stable in southern Minnesota. This COULD mean that there’s more easy birds (young ones) early […]
Lessons from 2012 Maine-NH Hunt
Don’t know if we’ve fully recovered yet from our not-quite-a-week of hunting Maine and New Hampshire for ruffies and woodies. We all actually bailed 2 days early, having put in 5 consecutive days instead of our usual 7. Felt like wimps about it, but hey, we were BEAT…from 5 days of the most brutal hunting […]
No Grouse Comeback in SW Penn?
Sounds like ruffed grouse will never be as much a part of the landscape of southern Pennsylvania as they once will. “Never” sounds ominous. Permanent. But that’s the conclusion of an article by Bob Frye in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Why should you care if you don’t live or hunt in PA? Reasons: > Pennsylvania is […]
Hey: All Ruffies Drum Differently!
Did you know that? Not until now…. This info won’t help us hunting, but it’s interesting – and makes sense. Here’s more, from newscientist.com: Male ruffed grouse are the first animals known to make unique non-vocal sounds. Humans and many other animals, particularly birds, can be identified by their voices. But no one had looked […]
Ran across this quote from an article about Iowa’s pheasant count: > “I haven’t even gone pheasant hunting the last couple of years because the birds just weren’t there,†said Tim Wolf, a 61-year-old bank president who lives in Waukee. YES THEY WERE! They most definitely were there. Maybe not like this… > “But I’ve […]
Top 10 Reasons To Go to Phez Fest
Pheasants/Quail Forever’s Pheasant Fest/Quail Classic is coming up soon at KC, MO (see info in right column), and just in case you’re thinking it’s too far or whatever, here are the Top 10 – really just 10 of many – reasons to go. We’re doing it Letterman-style, 10 to 1. 10. What else are you […]
Across the Pond Bird Follies, Vids
Ah the UK, the land that gave the world 17 pieces of silverware on the table, animal rights and other questionable stuff. Okay, it wasn’t all bad – that’s where our bird hunting came from too. But it’s different here…or there, depending on your perspective. Here’s some recent bird news plus some interesting vids. Katie […]
Do Congress, Tea Party Hate Pheasants?
We make it a point to try not to get suckered by political hoo-ha, so that’s not what this is about. We ran across a blog post on the Discovery-owned treehugger.com titled “Why Does Congress Hate Pheasants?” and a related one, “Do Tea Party, Heritage Foundation Oppose Hunting?” Interesting stuff, written by the same gent, […]
Quail, the most beleaguered of our beloved gamebirds, is getting a helping hand in Kansas. Or rather, a bigger helping hand. The state just announced that it’s “launching a new quail restoration initiative aimed at making a difference in declining bobwhite quail populations at a landscape level.” Here’s more: > Includes the designation of two […]
Worms and Birds: What Else Don’t We Know?
Believe we’ve talked about this at least once, but a recent Wall Street Journal article on the plight of Texas quail got us thinking about it again. Here’s the applicable stuff: …Rolling Hills Quail Research Ranch, a 4,700-acre spread an hour west of Abilene. Last month, researchers there found that the levels of parasitic worms […]
Top 10 Reasons To Go to Phez Fest
Pheasants/Quail Forever’s Pheasant Fest/Quail Classic is coming up soon at KC, MO (see info in right column), and just in case you’re thinking it’s too far or whatever, here are the Top 10 – really just 10 of many – reasons to go. We’re doing it Letterman-style, 10 to 1. 10. What else are you […]
Lone Star Outdoor news recently carried an article on a speech given by Dr. Dale Rollins of the Rolling Plains Quail Research Ranch near Rotan, Texas. Seems that a major threat to quail, at least in the Lone Star state, may be an eyeball worm. News to us! Highlights: > Especially mysterious were the continued […]
