Know Your Limits: Choosing Not to Pull the Trigger

It's been a good year for deer hunting. I've even been able to christen a new rifle---a slick modern .338 Winchester Magnum in a nice weatherproof package. It has accounted for three deer in two states and the results have been terrific. Each deer was taken with a single 200 gr. Hornady SST bullet and all fell within eyesight immediately.

With the larder full and the bonus antlerless season open I decided to break out the Big Iron for a real challenge. Big Iron AKA the Winchester 1885 in .405 Winchester is a ton of fun to hunt with because of the history, cool-factor, and unique cartridge. The tang sight is plenty accurate at reasonable distances (125 yards in good light for me). I've taken my best buck with it and a few other animals. With the .405 Winchester pushing 300 gr bullets 2200+ FPS it really hammers game.  With reloads? Holy cow. Here's an example with my preferred powder from Hodgdon:



Despite the impressive ballistics, I only am really comfortable shooting the iron sights out to about 125 yards in ideal conditions. This became a bit of an issue this evening as I sat in a old straw barn, waiting for a corn-fed doe to meander into the field I was over looking. The first deer I saw emerged from the timber about 15 minutes before last shooting light. The two does surveyed their surroundings, jumped a cattle lane, and entered the field about 300 yards away. They crossed the field at a diagonal to me and never got closer than 157 yards (trust me, I ranged them). I didn't take the shot and had no regrets. Nonetheless, I kept hunting with hopes of seeing more deer. Just a few minutes later, not two but SEVEN more does came out from the exact location and started heading for me. Things were about to get interesting.



Finally, the seven does were 67 yards from me feeding. I had the 1885 propped up on shooting sticks and was desperately trying to make heads or tails of a sight picture. Unfortunately, by now the failing light had betrayed me and the tang sight's aperture wasn't letting enough through for me to see anything other than general shapes. If you've hunted ducks before you know that "flock shooting" is a complete waste of shells and always leads to disappointment. How much more so would this be ineffective (and ethical) while shooting game with a rifle?

In the end, I watched the herd feed, play and do what deer do before silently slipping out of the barn and walking back to the truck. Did I want a deer? Absolutely. Did I think that most any chest hit with the cannon I was packing would dump a deer on the spot? Absolutely. However, you just can't take unethical risks when an animal's suffering hangs in the balance.  I'll keep packing Big Iron and the next animal taken with it will not suffer---even if means waiting until next year.

On Jump-Shooting Gadwalls

Crouched before the great earthen berm

Ear deep in crackling prairie grasses

With the northern wind lamenting the slate-gray sky

The contented gabbling, feet away

Promises that the rugged miles

Have not yet been wasted

Muted ducks for a muted world

The white speculum—a cotton boll

Amidst the browning field

A raft of Gadwalls

Dabbling among the ringtails

The sleet begins

As I spring the flock

Pellets of ice

Pellets of steel

Could one be harder than the other?

I wade into the frigid waters

Only denim to fight the chill

Yet one duck lost

Is one too many

When we understand the gravity

 of this gray duck kill

The ice now coats the barbed wire

And each step a harrowing feat

I’ve reach the summit

Of this hill called ‘Hell’

An abandoned homestead at my feet

The birds will hang within the barn

A day, at least, or more

Some Port, an orange, red currant jam

The sauce, called Cumberland, their paramour

The Feeble Bowhunter

$15 worth of camouflage fabric, an uncomfortable stool, and a dream. The poor mobile man's deer blind! In truth, it didn't look bad. I stretched the die-cut fabric taut between two red cedars and secured it in place with 3 ft. garden stakes before I slouched onto the stool. Bow in hand, I waited until the soprano chorus of frogs from the nearby beaver pond was interspersed by a barred owl's baritone proclamations. As evening's shadow settled on the canary-yellow soybean field I had to wonder, "What am I even doing here?"

Three weeks ago the field had been a deep spring green and was covered with deer sign. You could not walk without noticing the absolute obliteration of the tender leaves by hungry deer. Better yet, I had stumbled unto the figurative gold mine of whitetail signposts: a fresh scrape-line culminating in an aggressive rub on a cluster of small trees. I literally cancelled my Wednesday night plans when I found it (sorry church group, I made the wrong decision). Yet, once Kansas' archery season rolled around the temperatures hovered at unseasonable highs. If anything stymies a deer hunt, it is warm and humid weather. No doubt the activity continues, but it all occurs after dusk.

Two weeks later, my veritable gold mine turned out to be full of pyrite. I had hunted, battling literal clouds of mosquitoes, without so much as seeing a single deer. Worse yet, the green sea of soybeans had turned goldenrod and the tender leaves shriveled. At once I stopped finding tracks, much less rubs and scrapes. The deer had simply moved to better forage. Yet, I hunted this very spot once again today, grasping that maybe just one buck would wander by to check the scrape left weeks before. Alas, it was not to be. I had to settle for enjoying the playful chirps of a covey of bobwhite quail. Holding my bow loosely, I couldn't help but feeling incredibly feeble. "How can I expect to actually kill a deer with this?" was all I could think to myself.

Disregard that fact that I have already taken game (including deer) with the very same bow. When one fruitlessly bowhunts for any given amount of time, the effort eventually takes on an air of futility. In fact, the very weapon that you hold feels feeble. Yet, take the same weapon to the archery range and you can hurl lethal shafts deep into totem animals. Disregard the fact that our ancestors killed giant megafauna with indescribably less powerful tools---the thing begins to feel like a tinker toy!



Too strong is the pull of the rifle. Zero the scope. Rest the gun. Exert dominion over everything within eyesight. Yet, conservation departments either know us too well or they have a twisted sense of humor. Bow seasons last months (September-January in Kansas), whereas rifle season lasts only days (less than two weeks in Kansas). If you really want to hunt the best times in the season (the so-called chase phase) you simply cannot use a rifle legally in most states. Therefore, we are back to the bow. I'll eventually overcome the self-doubt. I'll adapt, just as the deer have adapted. Abandonment of the soybeans means wholesale utilization of another food source. This weekend I'll wear out some bootleather in hopes of finding it.




Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 - Muffet - Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/267994814/in/photostream

Safety Blankets and Choke Tubes

Last weekend I found myself waist deep in a marsh more fantastic than real. It may have been the fact that I was there 1.5 hours before sunrise, but the water was crystalline clear and the algae beds seemed like plush green carpets installed by some unbalanced drunkard. I thought about all of this as I slogged toward the edge of a raft of marsh-grasses, wondering if my wingshooting ability would be keen enough to make the journey worthwhile. An hour later, I forgot all about the walk in as the tearing-silk sound of Blue-Winged Teal streaking overhead erased all other thought but "More shells!"



The night before, I was in first class waffle mode. I had been shooting my scattergun quite well at the clays range and had even been doing respectably on Mourning and Eurasian Collared Dove. I attributed to this to two factors: (1) many of the doves had been decoying and (2) I had really learned the nuances of the Skeet constriction Carlson's Sporting Clays tube screwed into the business end of my 12 gauge Stoeger M3500. In fact, I had grown so attached to the choke that it was with much trepidation that I replaced it with the factory Modified constriction choke prior to the teal hunt. This was a logical decision, based on my host's recommendations and my knowledge that much of the teal would be harvested by pass-shooting.

So why so much to do over a choke? No doubt choke matters, but as Field & Stream's shotgun guru Phil Bourjaily puts it, most people miss by feet but choke only gives you inches.  For more of Phil's input on chokes see his two-part blog post (Part 1: http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/the-gun-nuts/random-thoughts-on-choke-pt-1, Part 2: http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/the-gun-nuts/some-random-thoughts-on-choke-part-ii). Despite only giving you inches, even a little wider pattern or a few more pellets on target can make the difference between a heavy game bag and a day ending in disappointment. Sure, sportsmen shot fixed choke guns for decades without issue. However, a bit of thought and a quick choke change can bring you closer to a bag limit or a winning clays score.

For true wingshooting (not turkey-hunting) I find myself reaching for two choke constrictions almost exclusively. The first is the aforementioned Skeet constriction (SKT) Carlson's Sporting Clays Tube and the second is the same style tube in Improved Modified (IMP MOD). These are actually pretty uncommon chokes, as most shotguns will come from the factory with Improved Cylinder, Modified, and Full chokes. Before I get into when and where I use SKT vs IMP MOD it is important to understand what each of the designations means.

Chokes constrict the internal diameter of a shotgun barrel. This restriction is measured in thousandths of an inch. As constriction increases, patterns tighten. Of course, all of this varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. The following chart gives a general idea of constrictions and the percent of pellets that each choke will deliver in a 30" circle at 40 yards. The percentages are approximate and some of the lesser-used chokes do not have percentages provided.







Keeping this chart in mind, I generally choose a Skeet constriction choke for the following scenarios:

Sporting Clays.  My local range throws true doubles exclusively. The targets are fast, but often close range.

Doves. This tube is especially effective on decoying doves. I had a number of beautiful doubles on doves committed to a spinning wing Mojo decoy this year thanks to the generous pattern of the Skeet choke at close range.

Decoying Ducks. See Doves.

Bobwhite Quail. Self-explanatory. The perception of blistering speed makes the Skeet tube a great confidence booster, though it probably isn't necessary.

Cottontail Rabbits. See Bobwhite Quail.

Despite the excellence of the SKT tube for many situations inside 25 yards, there are hunting scenarios where it just doesn't give the pattern density needed to make clean kills. This is where the Improved Modified tube comes into play. Higher pellet counts offset reduced impact energy as a result of extended ranges and as a result of less dense steel shot. I pick the IMP MOD in the following scenarios:

Jump-Shooting Ducks. This is where I spend the majority of my time wingshooting. Birds can be large (we sometimes encounter Giant Canadian Geese), ranges long, and steel shot (even at high velocities) doesn't perform as well as lead.

Pass-Shooting Waterfowl. With steel, IMP MOD delivers Full choke performance and often patterns better with large shot (B, BB, BBB, T) than an actual Full choke.

Squirrels. A tighter choke makes it easier to reach bushytails way up in the treetops.

Pheasant Hunting. See Jump-Shooting Ducks.

Now about those teal. It turns out that the Modified choke choice was the best one. I did miss quite a few birds, but that can be attributed to my absolute, indescribable sense of being overwhelmed by the number of birds flying. Once I settled down and picked my shots the shell to bird ratio decreased substantially.

Hunting Choices & Opportunity Costs

If you have considered reevaluating your personal finance practices at any time in the last 20 years you have undoubtedly heard the name Dave Ramsey before. If you haven’t, stop reading this blog post and immediately find a friend with his Financial Peace University program and borrow it. Ramsey has helped numerous people free themselves from debt and like many young couples my significant other and I are in the process of going through the program. While listening to a lecture today on the topic of personal finance, I was struck when Dave explained the concept of opportunity costs. Simply put, opportunity costs are tradeoffs that occur when you choose to spend your money or time on one thing instead of another. For example, if I invest my disposable income in an IRA, I can’t also use it to do home improvements. Assuming that most people act rationally, we tend to choose the option which we perceive gives us the greatest return.

Now, the concept of an opportunity cost is not new to me. However, what if I considered it in light of hunting? I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out. How we spend our time outdoors ultimately determines what benefit we yield from such time. Because we cannot be in two places at once, there are opportunity costs associated with each outdoor activity. A number of different variables affect the result of a hunt (and the associated opportunity costs):

-Game pursued

-Located hunted

-Time of day

-Weapon used      

-Hunting party size

-Hunting technique

Consider the following scenario:

It is a Friday afternoon in November and you the have rest of the weekend to hunt at your leisure. You have access to a mixed terrain parcel of land with hardwood timber, a winter wheat field, a 40-acre flood control impoundment, and hillsides full of blackberry bushes. Right now, hunting seasons for whitetail deer, rabbit, squirrel, quail, and waterfowl are open. You have a hunting buddy nearby that is always willing to go for an adventure.

What do you pursue?

Every decision we make is a trade-off and I’ve been in this scenario a hundred times. The decision is never easy. Because gun season for whitetail is often short (two weeks or less) there is a huge pressure to hunt deer. However, unless you’ve considered the need to accommodate two people with a ground blind, multiple stands, or a two-person stand then you either have to leave your buddy out of the hunt or risk being unsuccessful. Conversely, if you want to hunt small game or birds the likelihood of you harvesting a deer is slim. Furthermore, you’ll need to be wearing blaze orange which makes waterfowl hunting extremely difficult. Finally, if you do decide to take waterfowl you’ll also need to pack only non-toxic shot, which is expensive and ineffective at extended distances.

Can you see how this turns into a big puzzle? Oft times when faced with such decisions I tend to hedge my bets—I pursue a mixed bag (small game and birds) with non-toxic shot and a partner. This increases the fun factor of the hunt because the day is varied and can be spent with a companion in the field. Yes, you’ll have to wear blaze orange and you’ll spook a number of ducks. You’ll also be forced to limit your shots to relatively close range. However, the associated opportunity costs are less than what I perceive to be the benefit of going afield with a buddy and pursuing one of my favorite quarries (waterfowl).

Where opportunity costs really come into play is in choosing a weapon. If you’ve read my prior blog post “Dynamic” Bird Watching (http://piouspatriot.blogspot.com/2014/05/dynamic-bird-watching.html) you’ll recall that I was forced to pass on a really, really big tom turkey this year because I opted to take a shotgun along that had a limited range. I’m tickled to have gotten a turkey despite this, but I still can’t help but slightly wonder if things would have not been different had I been actually been packing my shotgun that is set up to shoot turkeys at long range. This is a perfect example of taking odd weapons afield and paying for it—yet for me it is a trend that I don’t see ending anytime soon.

I have a nostalgic streak a mile wide, which is why I’m set on trying to take a deer this year with a single-action revolver. There is just something undeniably cool about forcing yourself to get close to the quarry and making the shot that most people can’t. This is also why I often let my compound bow sit in the closet and why I pick up my lithe (but decidedly less efficient) longbow. The downside to this is that there is an associated opportunity cost and frequently you come home empty-handed. Now, as a hunter you have to accept from the beginning that you won’t be successful on every outing. However, there is such a thing as a glutton for punishment.

About four years ago I was at the zenith of my duck hunting fervor. I loved it. Mallards. Gadwalls. Wigeons. Heck, I’d even shoot a Ringneck. There was great joy in sneaking over a pond dam and seeing a veritable array of different duck species on the other side. To boot, I had gotten really good at shooting ducks. In fact, on a number of occasions I would empty my gun (limited to three shells by law), kill three ducks, reload, and kill three more ducks on a single rise. Despite having killed hundreds of ducks in my life, I had not (and still haven’t) shot a duck with a band. This failure ate at me and gnawed my very core as a duck hunter. Where could all of these mythical banded ducks be!? Despite this, I still loved duck hunting and wanted to combine it with another one of my passions: shooting a longbow. So, for about two months’ time I duck hunted with a quiver of arrows on my back and a longbow in my hand. Talk about failure. I buzzed ducks with arrow fletchings. I spooked ducks trying to get close. I lobbed arrows at ducks on the other side of the pond. I belly-crawled up to ducks and spent countless time glassing ducks with binoculars. Pretty much the only thing I didn’t do was kill a duck with a longbow. Eventually, reality set in and I realized that the opportunity cost was just too high. Each time a red-leg mallard sprung from the cattails and each time a white-capped wigeon whistled away I could not help but think, “Was that the banded duck I’ve been waiting on?”

However, not all nostalgia-fueled escapades are such abysmal failures. Last year I managed to do two novelty method hunts that were so rewarding that I’ll be back to hunting ducks with a longbow before long. You see, I actually managed to take a public land whitetail with an iron-sighted rifle designed in 1878 and I managed to harvest a cottontail rabbit with a revolver. Though neither animal would be going into a record book, each of these hunts left an indelible mark on my hunting mindset and have led me to hunger for more challenging adventures. So, in the end when you consider how you’ll go afield next fall perhaps the greatest reward might be to still-hunt instead of freeze to death in a deer stand, or to take your grandfather’s shotgun afield instead of your new Benelli. Antler and meat count for a lot to a hunter, but they don’t count quite as much as memories do.

The Old Way

 

Summer rains bring life          

Russet fins break the surface
Wading with my gig    

Part heron, part Cherokee

A statue turned lightning

"Dynamic" Bird Watching

I never considered that I would shoot a turkey today. In fact, I didn’t even think that I would be seeing turkeys today. My sweetheart and I were going to take a mini-vacation this week, culminating with hiking the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Because I took a half day of vacation and because the current film selection in the local theater was terrible, we decided to go for a walk and see if we could not put her new digital camera to good use. I knew of a local lake that had been producing good numbers of migratory shorebirds, so I suggested that we go there.

Fast forward two hours later. We’d seen American pelicans, cranes, geese, swallows, shrikes and assorted other fowl. After relocating a couple miles down the road I passingly told my sweetie that we were in excellent turkey habitat. The gravel road ended in a massive hardwood draw with a beautiful washout on the right hand side. A considerable clearing with aged trees interspersed throughout looked exactly like the kind of place that a longbeard would hang out…and it was! After discussing the habitat, my partner encouraged me to giving calling a try, just for kicks and giggles. I quickly fished a diaphragm call out of my pack and gave two sets of three-note yelps. I was immediately answered by a gobble a few hundred yards away.

Now we are in a predicament. We are not in turkey hunting attire. I am wearing my brightest blue jeans, a gray polo, and a Cabela’s hat with a bright orange fish on it. My dearest was clad in blue jeans, sportswear and a blue-gray Nike hat. This was going to be interesting. I quickly placed her behind a large oak and descended the slope about 10 yards to shorten the potential shot range. I knew this would be necessary. Typically when turkey hunting I carry a Stoeger 3500 with a Primos Tightwad Choke and Winchester Longbeard XR ammo. This setup with the 3 1/2” shells (2 oz of 5 shot in a resin-locked column) will kill a bird way on the other side of 50 yards. However, I wasn’t planning on going turkey hunting today; I was planning on going walking. So, I was packing my “walking” shotgun: a Remington 870 Wingmaster retired from a Midwestern police department and given new life as my home defense gun. It is perfect for walking because of the light weight, short length-of-pull stock, and handy single-point sling. Despite its utility, I knew that an 18” cylinder-bored barrel and 1 ¼ oz of #6 shot was not going to do the job past 25 yards.



After 15 minutes of talking turkey (hah!) I finally caught a glimpse of the tom that had responded. Not only was this the only gobbler I had in range all year, it was also likely the biggest tom that I had ever encountered in the field. His beard was every bit of 8” long. Unfortunately, I only had about a 10 second window to take the bird and he was over 40 yards away. I aligned the rifle sights on his day-glo red head but couldn’t force myself to pull the trigger. I knew the limitations of my weapon and it would have been an irresponsible decision. Soon after the gobbler disappeared into the brush and began putting. Once you hear this turkey vocalization, you know that the show is over. I climbed back up the bank only to find that my girlfriend had watched the turkey for 2 minutes before I ever had the chance to see him.



I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I wasn’t feeling downtrodden. We preceded out of the hardwoods and into a field-edge. A lake channel ran parallel to our path and I intended to make way for an overlook that would provide a good opportunity to set up the camera’s tripod. Half way there and we both heard rustling in the brush to our right. My girl pulls on my backpack and we pause. A few hopeful yelps are quickly sung but no reply occurs. Three steps later and the tall grass on the other side of us explodes in a hurricane of green blades and barred feathers. I immediately can tell that we have busted a bedded tom, but I can’t tell what size. Being the meat hunter that I am (don’t judge) I swing the 870 briskly and slap the trigger just as the bird takes flight. The whole ordeal lasts less than 2 seconds and I have not only my first Kansas turkey, but also my first public land turkey! Upon closer inspection it was obvious that the bird was a jake with a short beard, but I am still overjoyed. After a quick photo session I look up to see three other hunters coming towards us. They are each head-to-toe in matching designer camouflage, are wearing $100 turkey hunting vests, and are carrying camo-clad specialized turkey-hunting shotguns. They also look like I just walked over their grave—as I look like some twisted tourist, wearing a polo with a turkey in one hand and a riot shotgun in the other. After a quick chat with the boys we exchange well wishes and go about our respective ways. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good and today was definitely one of those days. I wouldn’t have traded this dynamic and heart-pounding harvest for any other.