Carry a Pumpgun while you're Learning to Hunt

Young people enjoy joining their families for a day spent hunting. Nothing says a youngster's "grown up" quite like his - or her - being allowed to carry a gun afield. And getting to take a shot when the hunt goes well is an extra special bonus.

Adults enjoy hunting with their youngsters, too, and realize that kids who are safety conscious contribute greatly to a pleasurable day afield. Here's a tip that not only assures a youngster's safe carry of his shotgun, but also improves his gun handling skills and provides a stage for him to demonstrate sound decision making afield.

I think a young hunter is really well served by carrying a pump gun as he or she learns the game. Guns built for smaller shooters are readily available, and they're almost always lighter in weight and much less expensive than semi automatics or over/ under doubles. And pumps offer a neat loading configuration that yields them visibly safe to other hunters in the party while still being instantly ready to activate for firing. I was taught this technique when I learned about small game hunting, chasing rabbits before beagles many years ago. I was told to load two shells by inserting both into the magazine and none in the chamber. Whenever possible, I also was to leave the action visibly open. The open action part is a whole lot easier to do when the gun is at rest.

By keeping the chamber empty, the gun remains safe. The novice hunter gets the opportunity to decide when a shot is imminent, and then (s)he can arm the pump and enjoy that satisfying "snick" of the action in the process. I think this is a terrific technique for keeping the gun safe until the appropriate time, and for encouraging the novice to understand that the time spent shooting is only a small part of the total time spent afield.

Is a professional fitting with a "try gun" for you?

Gun Fit Basics

Ever notice that shotgun writers are forever obsessing about "fit" while you may never find that word referenced in writing about rifles? A rifle that shoots high or low, left or right can readily have its impact point corrected by moving the rear sight. Since there is no physical sight on an upland shotgun, it has to be invented by placing the dominant eye - that's the right eye for me and other right handed shooters, and I'll stick to that frame of reference here - consistently over the centerline of the gun's barrel or barrels, and consistently at just the right height. Experienced shotgunners can accomplish this by fine tuning their guns' length of pull, drop, cast and pitch.

Before I talk just a little about these four variables, let me emphasize the importance of the term "experienced." If you're a newer shotgunner and haven't considered, practiced and grooved the moves you make when mounting your gun in acquiring a moving target, then your lack of consistency in locating your dominant eye means that you, as yet, have no "perfect fit." Save your money, but spend your time grooving a good mount.

Getting back to those four gun fit variables, let's first collocate them by stating, perhaps obviously, that they all relate to the size and shape of the butt stock, traditionally the piece of wood held in the right hand. Length of pull is the distance from the trigger to the back of the butt. For the other three, let's first imagine shoving a broom stick down and, in our imaginations, through the back end of the gun's barrel or barrels. The drop of the stock measures its distance below the extended broom handle; the cast of the stock measures its distance right or left of the extended broom handle; and the pitch of the stock measures the angle - usually close to 90° - made between the extended broom handle and the line made when the sawyer cut the butt's rear end off.

A "try gun" as shown in the lead graphic is a simple break action gun that the customer is made to shoot at fixed and moving targets. The fitter notes the impact point of the shot cluster when the customer believes he has "centered one," and, through a series of adjustable joints, configures the physical dimensions of the butt stock to place the dominant eye right in the sweet spot. When this is achieved, the gun will shoot, in fact, "right where the shooter is looking," and the gun will be said to "fit."

What The Try Gun Doesn't Tell You

An experienced shotgunner can expect measurements for all four variables, accurate to about 1/8", from his "professional fitting." In 2006, this most likely costs somewhere in three figures. If the cost doesn't make you blink, good for you; but it's far from the worst of the news. First of all, there is no Grand Poobah of Gun Fitting who has set out The Standard And Immutable Table of Values for fellows of your size and shape. This means that your measurements from a fitter in Portland, ME, accurate to 1/8", might in no way match similarly "accurate" measurements from another fitter in Portland, OR.

Worse yet is what can happen after you actually - finally! - get "your perfect measurements." You know these measurements are sweet because of the way you effortlessly smash your targets as they pass left and right. But, as time marches on, your wondrously fitting gun becomes erratic, and seems to experience success rates as variable as the weather. What has happened? Part of the problem is, in fact, the weather. You were wearing, well, whatever you were wearing when the fitter measured you. When you're out shooting on days hotter or colder or wetter than the fitter's studio, you change your inner and outer wear accordingly, effectively making you larger or smaller than the fellow who paid for the fitting. With the addition of a garment a bit bulky here, a tad stiff there, your perfect fit has gone down the drain. The other part of the problem sometimes comes with the passage of time. You lose weight - ha! - or gain weight, in your face, or chest, or variously; or your neck loses some of that youthful flexibility. The result is a needed change in one or more of the formerly "perfect measurements." Or, if you are fortunate and nothing changes but your preferences, you may decide that you need to replace the butt plate with a recoil pad, or that you just must have one of those little leather "pot holders" that the Brits slip over the fore end of their pricey side by sides. This, too, can hurt fit, specially if it had been pretty good to begin with.

So there you have it. A shooter shouldn't even consider a gun fitting until he has begun to groove a decent mounting move. Once he has, the fitter he chooses - and don't get me wrong, there are some good fellows doing this - will not even have had an opportunity to become licensed in his profession. Finally, once a shooter "gets his numbers right," it's unlikely they'll stay the same over a 25 year shooting career. Sort of takes some of the magic from the ads promising you a "perfect fit" through a try gun fitting, eh?

Nothing Succeeds Like Excess

What should you do? Many shooters buy, sell, trade, borrow and sample several guns over their shooting careers. When I say "several," that's what we tell our wives, if you follow. In this course of transactions, we occasionally find that a particular gun is very dependable in a certain regime of shooting. We either kill 35 yard ducks stone dead with it in our cold weather gear; or hammer woodcock in the pleasant weather of October; or maybe score consistently well on clays during the off season. Here is the mistake we too often make. One bad day - sometimes even one bad miss - sours us on that gun, and we make haste to get it out of our safe pronto. Don't do it!! It says here that a shooter's safe is best filled with several proven "niche" guns of whatever price, configuration and dimension, acquired after the shooter has begun to develop a sound mounting move. And don't even think about finding that one magical gun that "does it all;" it's mythical, not magical, most likely the peevish concoction of some seasoned bride with one too many dogs to feed and all too few party dresses.

"A Great Collection: Guns That Deliver On Your Favorite Game"

Hitting The South End Of A High Pheasant Flying North

Coveys of "Gentleman Bob" obligingly held tight in front of southern pointing dogs before a hunter's boot sent them buzzing off the ground like a feathered explosion. And northern gunners still catch their hearts in their throats when a ruffed grouse thunders up out of the gnarlies and rockets his way toward safety beyond leafy cover. Whether he chooses to hunt with one of the pointing breeds, a flushing dog or even dogless, the upland hunter is routinely presented with a classic rising shot.

Since the rising bird is such a common shot, the technique for shooting it is very important. There is even a shooting game dedicated to this shot. Trap, the most popular shooting sport in America, is designed solely around shots at rising outbound birds from random angles. Guns set up for trap shooting typically incorporate some simple design features so they remember that the target is rising even if the shooter forgets.

Figure (1) shows a typical example of the shot at a rising bird. As the bird comes into view at A, the gunner begins his mount and the muzzle rotates up and through the bird, taking it just beyond B.

Figure (1)

Every now and then, though, the technique for shooting rising game can really hurt your score afield. I'm talking, in particular, about those birds that have already gotten up a head of steam - maybe they were put up by your friend or his dog - and are now flying straight and level away from you. As you see the pheasant's tail heading away pronto, you rotate your 12 gauge up and through the bird and slap the trigger. Instead of a spray of feathers, you just see that rooster heading over the horizon. What happened?

A quick peek at figure (2) shows what the gunner must do with this shot, as counter as it might be to what we've learned from birds flushed from the ground. As the bird heads straight away at A, the gunner has to make his mounting move and then slip his muzzle below the bird, not up and through it. The hunter will not want to obstruct his view of his target by elevating the muzzle above the bird and then rotating down. An alternative technique might be to insert the muzzle on the bird's belly and then just "ease off" a bit, taking the bird a bit beyond B.

Figure (2)

Next time a bird has a flying start on you and sails by like an outbound express, remember the diagrams you saw here. They're not as complicated as the ones that confused you in high school geometry, and they may help you add a bird or two to your bag.

Pint Sized Dog Makes Ten Gallon Retrieve

I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool waterfowler. I don't do early mornings well, nor am I comfortable when it it is more than a bit cold or wet. Part nature, part nurture; whatever.

Walked up rough shooting, though, lets me hunt in the afternoon, and the trek through good cover helps me stay warm. Flushing spaniels are a perfect fit for me.

My 14 month 25 lb. English Cocker Spaniel and I hunted pheasants at our release club today. There is a sizable pond in the back of the property. One side is bounded by a cornfield from which a great many pheasants attempt a flighted escape. The other side of the pond, maybe 250 yards distant, has dense, nasty multi flora growing up from the bank, and with only a 6 ft. wide 4-wheeler trail in between, a mature oak woods extending beyond. My old American Water Spaniel and I learned years ago that pheasants missed on the cornfield bank often wound up safely in the gnarlies on the other. The pup and I were looking for such birds again today.

There is also the occasional goose or duck on the pond. Since waterfowl season is currently open, I was loaded with #6 non tox in the lower barrel and #4 non tox in the upper, thinking I would not mince a pheasant with a good first shot nor fail to anchor a departing mallard with a good second.

As we worked down the 4-wheeler track, I noticed geese swimming on the pond. Try as we might to hide, these birds usually see us crouching behind the multi flora and begin by swimming away, only to take off in the away direction in a raucous caucus of honking. But today, one bird swam sideways from the main group, its head sinuating on the water in a serpentine fashion. I took this as a clear indication that the bird was wounded and incapable of flight. After a 100 yard "stalk" behind the multi flora, giving the bird every chance to take flight, I decided that the bird was in fact a cripple and that I'd harvest it and see what pup could do with the retrieve. This is, obviously, not a story about my waterfowl hunting skills.

I killed the bird on the water at about 30 yards from the bank. The pup was out on it like a shot, and had it back to the bank in no time. Had I had the camera, the winning shot would have been of the 25 lb. dog dragging the 10 lb. goose tail-high arse-first out of the water up the bank. Delighted with his pluck, I didn't push for delivery to hand, and went to him about 3 yards up from the bank. He was happy to lay his burden down, and I was happy to "give him a pass" on delivering his first goose to hand.

I'm sure this pup is neither the first English Cocker, nor even the smallest dog, ever to fetch up a goose. But I'm very proud of him just the same, and excited about the future of our hunting partnership.

A Good Day Woodcocking

Except for a brief but glorious sunny period of about an hour, today was about as cold and damp as yesterday. The pup and I went 400 yards to the end of the street to hunt woodcock around 3:30 p.m.

This is the same field in which my old American Water Spaniel and I learned together about woodcock back in 1994. The dogwood, hawthorn and arrowwood has been growing in severely. I did not hunt the old guy there at all in the last two years as I thought it too severe for him. But since the pup is full of energy and I, for a variety of reasons, want to hunt this field, we ranged slightly outside our old killing grounds and found, much to my surprise and delight, cover that looked just like that which greeted us 11 years ago.

The recent wet wind from the north must be working its magic. I saw 8 birds in just over 80 minutes. Some of them were instantly invisible behind towering dogwood bushes still 60% in leaf. Two of them, though, just skimmed the tops of the bushes as the pup boosted them, offering snap shots. It is great fun to watch him - he's 13 months old - literally figure out where the woodcock are and aren't. When the season opened, he was still chasing around in the grass, probably because of his training on pheasants. Now he scoots through the heart of the bushes, right where my old veteran would have gone. The pup does not "flash point," though, as the AWS did, so this whole thing is happening much faster than it used to. Coupled with me being an old pensioner, I fear I'll be wasting lots of shells over time.

Not today, though, as I went a crisp 2 for 2. I'm using the Rizzini "New Englander" in 20 ga wearing .000" and .005" tubes. In a move to simplify my inventory of shotshells, my only 20 ga load is Remington's STS Target Load in #8 lead. This load is universally available, has quality components as it is a target load, and features a very slick plastic hull, literally, which feeds well in autoloaders and pumps. I only use it as a target buster and small, close bird killer, roles for which its high antimony content shot is well suited.

The weather man is forecasting happier weather for the weekend, so the pup might have his first whack at grouse then. I am thinking of a treasured but smallish spot where we might also find a duck or two. I'll take the camera just in case.

Deer Tracking

A thin sun was already rising on a crisp December morning when I rolled out of the rack for a day of leisurely deer hunting. I pulled into Grady's Christmas Tree Farm around 10 a.m. and rang the doorbell, carrying the still-warm cherry cheese Danish I'd bought as a “thank you” to my hosts. After some pleasant conversation over coffee and a bite, I was back out the door. As soon as my vest was loaded with the requisite candy bars, hand warmers and paperwork, I headed northwards through a light snow pack onto the property.

I had only been walking for about half an hour when I bounced a doe from where she had been laying near two small ponds in a field of goldenrod. Technically, the deer was on the neighbor's property. She was also a mere yearling. Although doe are fair game here by permit, I just watched with a small smile as she bounded off.

Ten minutes later, I was comfortably sitting against a small tree, overlooking a gamy-looking bowl with a swampy trickle oozing down its middle. This was a good place to daydream and chew on my Snickers. But no deer appeared.

As I prepared to move on, two orange-clad hunters came my way from the other side of the swamp. These were Keith and Tom, a couple of Grady's neighbors in their late teens. We did howdy n' shake, discussed strategy ("they're layin' in them pines," Keith confided), then went our separate ways.

I still-hunted without event for another 90 minutes. Getting a little chilly and a lot antsy, I decided to wander back towards the house for lunch and hot coffee. But I hadn't walked 20 yards from the tree where I’d last been sitting when I found some cold tracks in last night's snow. I figured that trying to follow this deer would settle the antsy part by curing the chilly part.

So I set to following the tracks into the woods. Cold cold cold tracks: the challenge was trailing this deer through several snowless swampy areas. I did, and soon fetched up to a hemlock tangle just beyond a tiny creek. Once again, the track became difficult to follow. I slowed down and studied the ground hard, following the tracks right through some gnarlies. They actually led me almost full circle. But on the far side of the tangle, the tracks were suddenly hot: that rascal had been laying in the tangle, literally under my nose.

These tracks were not remarkable for their length and breadth. They definitely didn’t belong to Old Hat Rack. Even so, it was a kick to have actually walked up a deer. I would tell my story back at home tonight, I daydreamed, and my wife would hang on to the Mighty Hunter's every word with admiration and rapt attention.

Following the hot track naturally increased the excitement level. Antsy and chilly were left for dead on the back side of that hemlock tangle. I noted that the deer was now heading in the general direction of the house. In fact, it crossed my in-coming track once, and bounced right through the target zone of another of my still-hunt stands. Oh well...

During all this tracking, I had heard a single shot here, and, a while later, a single shot there. I thought I might have driven this deer right into Keith and Tom. If so, I figured I'd just keep tracking, and help them drag the deer back to their car when I found them dressing it out. If I came upon a live deer instead, well, that would be just fine, too.

Soon, the track was bounding through a meadow of shoulder-high Christmas-trees-to-be. It disappeared at the edge of yet another wood, right at the base of a large old apple tree hopelessly tangled with thorns, prickers, and blackberries. I remembered how this deer had hidden just so a mile back. So I finally took the gun off my shoulder, and furtively slipped into the woods, sidestepping the thorns as best I could.

Ten yards ahead, there it lay at the base of a pole-sized tree: one tiny dead deer. Upon inspection, I saw it was a button buck. I daydreamed again of the admiring smiles of my wife: I had stalked this deer so relentlessly that it just up and died rather than prolong the Terror of a Stalk by the Mighty Hunter!

Upon closer inspection, however, “natural causes” were replaced by a shotgun slug through the heart as the immediate cause of death. My wife isn't impressed with my Mighty Hunter act anyway.

But now I was puzzled. Who would shoot a deer and then abandon it? I guessed that anybody dragging home a rabbit-sized critter in deer's clothing might be darn embarrassed with this “prize.” Even so, you just don't kill and run.

I followed the hunter's tracks from the swiftly cooling deer, and shortly came upon Keith and Tom. I asked which of them had shot the little buck. Neither of them had fired a shot, they said, but they had earlier seen two shadowy hunters skulking about the periphery of Grady's land. No sooner did the three of us return to the diminutive deer and curse the lowlife who would leave it in the woods when the two Shadowy Hunters arrived from over the hill, waving a doe management permit at me. It seems they had shot this pot-of-stew sized deer, but immediately discovered that their paperwork was back at the car. Now they were back to claim their prize. Happy enough ending, I guess.

I went back to the house for lunch and the telling of my mighty tale to hostess Sally and her daughter Mary. Did I notice just a hint of admiring sparkle at the edge of teenaged Mary's eye as I finished both tale and lunch and rose to go?

Yes I did! But the sparkle turned first into a snuffle, then a snicker, finally culminating in an outright guffaw. The Mighty Hunter had sat at the table for 30 minutes sporting his Hot Seat as a bright orange fashion accessory. The Mighty Hunter goes down in (orange) flames again. With dignity shattered, I fled the house for a final scoot around the property.

The only remarkable sign in the afternoon woods was a narrow track - kind of like a single fat cross-country ski - in the snow. After following it briefly, I noticed a drop of blood here and there. Then it hit me: the Shadow Hunters had dragged out their deer. For the life of me I couldn't understand why they hadn't just cut off its legs so they could stuff the remaining deer in a pocket.