Becoming a Better Hunter, Reflections on 2022
They say the new year is a good time to reflect on our successes and failures in the previous year. Since upland hunting is what I eat, sleep, and breathe, why not take it as seriously as I can and really look back on what I did right and wrong and try to improve? The following is a painfully honest assessment of the season. Quite frankly, it wasn’t good or easy to write about. The human ego makes it hard to accept the dissonance between really truly loving an activity, and admitting you just sucked it up this year. I’m a firm believer that a problem can’t be solved until it has been identified, and this is a fact finding mission. My hope is that I’ve identified the big areas holding me back, and that by attacking them mercilessly in the 2023 offseason, I’m going to see a real tangible result come next September. Who doesn’t love a good redemption story? Maybe this can become a blueprint for someone else who is struggling to put birds in the bag.
You are about to see six areas where I really believe I can do better. I’m going to keep progress updated on this blog for each area and you guys can feel free to hold me accountable. Are these six areas the only place I can improve? Hell no, but I think fixing these six are going to make me and my team of dogs a real force to be reckoned with. They certainly aren’t going to make me worse. Speaking of the dogs, you’ll see that not a single area I come up with is an indictment on them. They were finding and pointing birds almost every trip. In fact, the feeling that I’m letting them down is a big factor in motivating me to be better. The dogs performed outstanding this year, particularly Taz. Unfortunately for me, I can’t use them as a scapegoat. If they perform in the trial season the way they did in the hunting season, we are going to have some new ribbons to display real soon.
One area I plan to right this wrong is my shooting. To say mine was pedestrian this year would be an insult to all pedestrians. We all know that look our dogs give us when we miss a bird, or a hen flys up and there’s no shot. It is a hard look to describe and put onto paper, but any upland hunter knows exactly what I’m talking about. Luckily, my dogs haven’t disowned me yet for some reason. I’m going to do everything in my power to make it up to them before the next season arrives.
Come March, I’m going to join a gun club, and shoot clays once a week, every week until the season opens. I’m not saying that there is a direct 1 to 1 correlation between being a good clay shooter and a good wing shooter, but I think just going every week and getting the muscle memory down pat is going to make a huge difference when it comes to accuracy.
Along with shooting clay, I’m also going to shoot more birds in my training sessions. Hopefully, combined with the good habits I learn from more trap shooting, this will get me in prime state to kill birds come September 15th 2023. I’m going to chronicle these adventures, the good and the bad, on this blog.
Another factor I believe was a detriment to filling my game bag with birds was my lack of conditioning and endurance. This one is the hardest one to admit. I run my dogs regularly 9-10 months out of the year. These runs lead me to believe that my conditioning is just fine. Afterall, I can outwalk most of my hunting buddies. That doesn’t matter. If I’m as serious about hunting as I say, out walking weekend warriors that enjoy a leisurely hunt a few times a year on the weekends isn’t good enough. I need to be able to plow through cover for as long as it takes for either the dogs to run out of gas, or my limit to be filled, preferably the latter.
The plan of action I’ve come up with for this is about as obvious and straightforward as it gets. I need to get off the couch and start running. I’ve already signed up for my first 5K, and I’ve been running 5-6 days a week for the last month or so. It’s really not as hard as it sounds. When I first started, I couldn’t remember the last time I voluntarily ran. I went out to our local high school track and ran a mile. I was spent. I kept at it though. As of this writing, I’m getting up at 4:30 am every morning and running for 35 minutes without walking to really build endurance. I’m not so worried about speed (35 minutes for me equates to about 3 miles). I plan on increasing this time by 5 minutes every week until I get up to an hour. My logic is that if I run 5-6 miles every morning, I should be able to walk virtually unlimited distances during the hunting season. Hell, I should be able to get a bird or two every time out of sheer luck if I can hunt all day.
I don’t write about my running to toot my own horn or look for encouragement. Quite the opposite. What I’m suggesting is that if I can get up and workout like this, so can you. I’ve never been the athletic type. I don’t believe before this, I had ever run more than a mile without stopping in my entire life. In one month, I’m already up to 3 miles and 35 minutes. If an unathletic guy with way too much weight can do that, imagine what you can do. Would it have a tangible effect on your endurance come next fall?
The next area I’m about to address is perhaps the one that excites me the most. It is reading and gaining knowledge. This area excites me because it is an area I can not only improve this year, or even the next 20 years, but the rest of my life. As you get older, your reaction time is going to get a little slower. Your muscles and bones are going to start to get a little weaker. Despite this, we all know an older guy who outhunts everyone. This is because of a lifetime of knowledge and experience that you can only get the hard way. My grandpa used to tell me that no one can ever take away the things you learn.
For the next long months until hunting season starts again, I’m going to read every hunting and training book I can get my hands on. I have several on my shelf I’ve read already, but did I really read them? Did I have a notebook or highlighter next to me to really mine the gold that is stashed in the pages containing the knowledge of these top flight trainers? I think I can do better, so I’m going to be rereading them. To make sure they really hit home, I will be posting reviews on this blog on every book I read and explaining what gold nuggets I extract from each one. I’m confident that upon further review, I’ll be able to gain some new insight from each book.
Books aren’t the only medium I plan on taking advantage of though. As much as I believe in reading, there are some things you just can’t ascertain from reading and need to see an actual demonstration. There are a great many youtube videos out there on bird training, and I will be doing the same thing with those.
Along with books and videos, the advice from folks that are at the place you’d like to be is invaluable. If you’ve never been to a field trial, there is an abundance of folks like that there. The great part is that for the most part, they love talking bird dogs and are more than happy to talk about their training and their hunting. This year, I’m going to make a concerted effort to keep my mouth closed and my ears open and really take advantage of this wonderful resource. It is almost like you are getting their experience without making the mistakes they had to make in order to gain that experience or learn that lesson.
Working hand in hand with a knowledge base, is how you apply it in training, which is the next area I’ve identified. Now, I really enjoy training my dogs and I believe I work with them more than the average dog owner. The problem, as I see it, is I think I need to train smarter and not harder. Looking back, a good many “training” sessions were turning the dogs loose for a half hour and letting them run around a training field and handling them like I would during hunting season. While this type of training can certainly be valuable, what is a dog really learning after they do that for the umpteenth time this month?
Maurice Lindley stated in Martha Greenlee’s wonderful book “Training With Mo” that every training session should have a purpose. You should know exactly what you are trying to teach the dog, and have a desired outcome in mind. What are you going to do if the dog reacts this way or that way? I’m paraphrasing of course, but I think this is a valid point. My dogs aren’t learning much from these poorly thought out “training sessions”.
To remedy this, I’m now raising homing pigeons that will be ready to fly by the time this Michigan winter relents and I can start training again. I’ve been consuming every piece of media I can consume that covers bird work, and by the time training starts, I will have a clear and concise plan of attack every time I turn my dogs loose.
The next area that let me down this year is my equipment. We live in a materialistic world. As much as I think it is detrimental to our society, there is no arguing that it has resulted in tools that make our hunts much easier. Can you imagine the old timers turning all age dogs loose without a tracking collar or an e collar? It makes me shudder too. Those guys were a different breed.
More specifically to me, the first place I need an upgrade is the shotgun. For the last two seasons, I’ve been rocking an H&R Pardner Pump 12 gauge. Now, before I continue, I don’t think all these guns are inherently bad for every purpose. I have another Pardner Pump that is configured for turkey hunting that is one of my favorite guns. It has never let me down, and I shoot well with it.
The problem with this particular Pardner Pump is that it has a 22” (!) barrel. I bought it when I first got into bird hunting from Walmart for less than $200. With all the other things a new dog man must buy, a new gun just kept slipping by the wayside. It seems obvious now, but this should’ve been one of the first things I upgraded. Next season, not only will I have a more appropriate gun, but I’ll also have a much better idea about how things like different loads and chokes affect the gun.
Another piece of technology I employ that could really use an upgrade is my hand-me-down Astro 220. While it still functions OK, there have been a lot of advances made in the 20-30 years since the 220 was new. If I don’t turn on my receiver and transmitter and let them synch in the exact right order, the unit will malfunction. It eats AA batteries like a bear eats salmon running in a river. The collar on the DC20 is starting to fray. I’m not sure upgrading this would equal more birds in the bag, but it’d sure equal a much greater peace of mind.
The last (but far from least) area I have identified is my scouting. I think every upland hunter is guilty. We hit the same honey holes year after year that have produced birds in the past. Sometimes this strategy is successful, but I think it is the lazy way to do it. This year, I ran my dogs maybe twice in the preseason with the specific aim of scouting. Both of these areas had trucks parked in them at 4am on opening day when I left to find a spot. Now what?
Looking back, this is completely inexcusable. If you have a dog and like running them, why not do it in as many places as possible to find birds? I’m not saying hit an area repeatedly and blow it out, and doing a lot of scouting will not only add to your knowledge base, but it gives your dogs more invaluable experience on how to handle wild birds. There really isn’t an excuse not to scout extensively before the season. It is going to make both you and your dogs better. As the hunting season gets nearer, be sure to keep an eye on this blog for some scouting reports on new areas I’m trying.
So there you have it, six areas that if I improve, I will have a better hunting season next year. Although these are my reflections, would improving your shooting, endurance, knowledge base, training methods, equipment, and scouting not increase your take as well? I encourage everyone to sit down and be brutally honest about where you came up short this year. I bet you’ll have some insights that surprise yourself.
