​“It was a Friday afternoon, early November, and waterfowl were just now concentrating on the big river as our puddles and small water developed ice.  But the river was open, minimal ice.  It takes serious deep freeze to lock it up.

I’d noticed a gravel bar about a half mile upriver was pulling in good numbers of roosting Canadas.  

There’s a riffle leading to the bar that looked traversable from our side of the river, and birds moving up and down the main channel pass right over a deadhead, a debarked cottonwood washed down from last spring, positioned just before the gravel beach where the birds were concentrating.  An ideal, ready made blind.  But hunting it would mess with the concentration of birds, and maybe send them up or downriver, away from us.  Right now they were roosting a half mile away, and the sugar beet fields they were feeding in were just a half mile in the other direction, also on our side of the river.  And there is an island smack dab in the middle, and it borders the main channel, and river ice isn’t risky for the dog…not yet.  So the island is where we went.

I  meant Vio, a seasoned yellow.  She knows her stuff.  At heel all the way, no ruckus.  But the same can’t be said for Reacher, a five month old Brittany.  He’s learning the ropes, and absolutely full of “PUPPY”!  But they both had their collars on, and I hoped this would be a positive learning experience for Reacher.  

We set up on the main channel side of the island, in some willow, and I found a nice back support bank edge with the warm sun on my back.  Even the pup settled down.  It was mid afternoon, and I was packing my old spanish 10 gauge, side by side.  The safety was acting up….where it would switch from off to on whenever I shot the first barrel of the two trigger gun.  It had just happened and I figured it was still safe to shoot, but did restrict me to a single shot.  But I loved the gun, its balance, and its just the ticket for reaching out for pass shots on big canadas.   As I thought about it I wondered whether the same thing would happen if I shot the tighter choke second barrel first?  A simple experiment.   All I needed was a cooperative bird, ideally one directly overhead and within range.

Moments later a single honker can be heard making its way upriver.  Right overhead, but a tall shot.  

I push the safety off, and swing through…remembering that old adage, “speed is lead.”  The second barrel’s tighter choke made the difference.  The bird buckled, and then drops.  Straight down!  “Oh Shit!” I’m thinking, as this ten or eleven pound cannonball plummets towards the three of us!  I’m thinking maybe I can knock it to one side with my barrels if it’s going to hit the pup.  Vio and I can take care of ourselves.  It’s the hapless pup I’m thinking about, as the birds flashes down.  

But it works out, and the goose bounces off cobble ten feet to our side.  Vio looks at me as if to say…”you call this a retrieve?”  But she does take three steps over and lifts the bird up, with Reacher attached, and drops it at my feet.

I checked the safety and it had stayed off.  So for now, this means I’m shooting the tighter barrel first.  Can do.  

A short while later a small cluster of four birds comes at me from upriver.  These birds are closer, and present a good shot.  And I’m really motivated to collect another bird, to even out the gambrel for the precipitous uphill climb to get home, which is a quarter mile away but includes a hundred plus foot ridge to clamber up.  

Another single falls, and lands nicely twenty yards away.  Vio does her thing, and I’m all smiles now with my balanced gambrel!

It’s still two hours until sundown.  I’m thinking “boy, this is a blast!”  Rarely do we enjoy good pass shooting in such mellow weather.  I sit there basking in the sun as the river flows by.  A cluster of five mergatroids drift by.  More fly over just two feet above the water.  These are big birds, maybe a bit larger than a northern mallard, but I’m not interested.  Hard to make them palatable.  But then a pair of green heads buzzes me, but I’m not ready, and pass on a marginal shot opportunity.  Still, they quicken the heart rate.

I can hear geese coming my way…heading upriver.  This is a flock, maybe sixty birds, and they line up nicely.  Right overhead.  Off with the safety, swing through, lined up with the string of birds, focussed on a big one three back from the point.  “Boom”, and I see a bird falter, then start dropping.  And amazingly, the bird beside it also folds!  So I hold off with the second shot.  Limit is five, but I’ve got a hill to climb!

Both birds fall within twenty yards of us.  Not much of a workout for Vio, but she has to be told about the second bird.  I give her a line and she heads off ninety degrees in the wrong direction.  It takes her about two minutes to swing through cover though and she finds bird number two readily.  On the other hand, taking a line needs work!  

It’s still an hour and a half of legal light.  Do I hold out for a limit?  One more bird?  Or is now the time to head in, with full light and fortyfive pounds of geese to lug, not to mention a seriously heavy side by side and assorted gear?  A younger me might of stayed put.  But I’m just a ten minute walk from a refreshing finger of bourbon?  I head back, and am really pleased to see Reacher handle the river riffle we need to cross with minimal hesitation.  He almost has to swim to negotiate it, and I am hoping he becomes water friendly.  I’m wishing for a resilient and versatile bird dog, capable of filling in for a seasoned lab.  He’s already had a good number of pheasant shot over his points, but we are a mixed bag hunt here, so waterfowl are almost always on the agenda.  

My good friend and seasoned waterfowler Frank has owned Brits for years now, and Reacher comes from that line.  His thirty-five pound Pete retrieves geese from the BigHorn.  He even has Pete trained to fetch his bourbon!  I’m serious.  Anyway…that’s another story!​It was a Friday afternoon, early November, and waterfowl were just now concentrating on the big river as our puddles and small water on the "mainland" developed ice.  But the river was open, minimal ice.  It takes serious deep freeze to lock it up.

I’d noticed a gravel bar about a half mile upriver was pulling in good numbers of roosting Canadas.  

This year I had a really unusual experience when three gals from Texas came by several days of mixed bag hunting.  It was during the first early season so ducks were on the menu, and at one point I had Laura, 83 year young Laura, covering an escape route twenty yards off of one of our favorite jump hunts, wood duck pond.  It was the first time the pond had been jumped this year, and it produced!  Woodies came off, but not all at once.  Laura had several shots and bagged two drakes.  Exceptional birds too!  Beauties.

Yesterday evening Anne and I were getting itchy towards late afternoon.  I’d asked if she had noticed a few ducks at a roosting point downstream on Yellowstone river, which flows by our place.   The pocket of quieter water just happens to be visible from the window above her desk.  “Yep” she says, “but I can’t tell what they are.  Probably teal, but I think there may be mallards there too.  Should we give them a try?”

Early season here is ideal for jump shooting as the property has dozens of puddles and oxbows.  Hunters can move quietly from one to another, and jump a real mix of birds, including woodies, mallards, teal, gadwall, widgeon, and redheads.  Even snipe, which we truly enjoy hunting for their challenging flight plans!  Mixed in with doves and pheasants and geese, and indian summer, it makes for ideal hunts!

We snuck on the birds, moving thru willow and tall grass until with my tall frame I had to hold as Anne continued the approach.  Finally the birds lifted and we both shot twice.  Three birds fell, all green wings.  We see more of these guys every year, where initially blues dominated.  Now both are here in numbers.

Then we walked farm roads that weave thru our spiral wetland.  Breaks in the cattails frequently hold birds, and as we came to open water near one of our designed cobble crossing points, a pair of mallards kicked up, the drake on Anne’s side and a hen on mine.  We shot at the same instant, and both birds folded.  I’ve never seen it come off just like that.  It was as if one shot had been fired at the birds that were twenty feet apart.

The shot had alerted another pair of mallards which we watched until they faded into the distance, so we continued to the wood duck pond.  Anne came in on one side, while I held on the other.  She and Vio, our youngest yellow lab, kicked up a hen woodie which Anne collected.  As Vio retrieved the bird I shifted to cover another smaller pond a bit behind the first, but nothing, so we proceeded on.  Between us we’d both passed on four pheasants so far too!  We weren’t hunting them just now.

As the sun was edging the horizon we decided to split up…Anne would jump what we call the upper wetland and then proceed onto Minnow Pond, while I would jump a small puddle with a great approach that allows a hunter to appear on the rim within great shotgun range if birds are present.  I’d shot a double on mallards there two days earlier.

Just as I got above the pond two rooster pheasants exploded from cover right below me to the left of the pond!  This alerted ducks, and they jumped off the right side, but within range.  I held on a drake and it folded, then swang my old spanish side by side twelve on another bird, and downed it too.  Another double!  Then Sam, our matriarch yellow, who hunts for me, did her thing.  She’d been on heel for the approach, and actually waited for me to give her a line.  Five minutes later she had the birds back to my hand.  Deep cover too, but her nose and experience handles it. 

About this time I looked up as I heard a shot, and saw birds departing from Minnow Pond.  Then I heard the familiar splash of Vio churning water in pursuit of a retrieve.

Anne had connected on a bluewing teal.  We were just a five minute walk from home, and enjoyed the orange and scarlet sunset as we headed back.  This was t-shirt weather too, and it’s hard to imagine a more pleasant hunt.   ​

In Gray’s Sporting Journal, Bird Hunting Edition, August 2016 – a wonderful read – two hunters are described in glorious detail.  One (a Texan known as Veggie Burger) is bumbling, unaware and unskilled, and as I read it, I thought, man, I’d hate to be that guy.  If I’d recognized myself in the writing, I’d be really embarrassed to think I’d been humiliated nationally.  It’s bad enough that Bruce tells anyone who’ll listen about my (novice) 100 yard shot on a rooster pheasant with a 28 ga.  I swear it was only 50….
 
The other writer, though, evokes a hunt for ruffed grouse in the woods of Northwest Montana, a story that made my heart yearn to be there alongside him.  After a day of walking, tracking, pointing, plenty of wild flushes but no shots, a magnificent bird bursts out of the cover and presents a marvelous shot opportunity.  How differently the story would have ended if the shooter had fumbled the shot and missed!  Diligence and skill made the hunt memorable for all the right reasons and made me want to practice.
 
The more I learn about wing shooting, the more I appreciate the skill level involved, but it’s taken me a while to “get it”.  At one level, bird hunting is deceptively simple: swing your gun on its beak and pull the trigger. If you miss, ah well – the bird lives another day and you may get another shot at it.
 
Or maybe not.  Instead, you may have crippled it, and it is going to die soon anyway, but a slower, futile death, unless you’re hunting just to feed coyotes and bald eagles. Missing the bird is just the tip of the iceberg:  all down the line, the unconsciously incompetent shooter is playing jeopardy with the health and safety of fellow hunters, their dogs and their own reputation. 
 
I think back with shame to the sky blasting I have done, getting more gung-ho as I became a better shot, yet not good enough to kill cleanly even half of the time because I was lacking other key skills.  I became driven in my need to prove myself, down more birds, compete with my husband.  Then I woke up.
 
When you have a broader concept of the skills required to be a decent wing shot, you take more pleasure in the process of hunting than in counting trophies, and – sort of ironically –put more birds in your bag.  The hunt becomes multi-dimensional, faceted, more like a dance than a relentless march towards a single goal. A clean kill is a desirable outcome, but if you view it as the culmination of a process, where you bring to bear both shooting and hunting skills, then you can enjoy the whole context, and if you do miss, or don’t get any shots, you’re less likely to get frustrated, miserable or downright pissed off! 
 
So, what are some of the skills that make bird hunting more pleasurable and successful?  One of the most important is learning to judge distances, and being disciplined about shooting within your range.  That leads to the ability to choose appropriate ammunition and chokes, and even influences the size of shotgun you carry.  Learning to observe how the bird flies is another skill.  Mounting your gun, balance, timing and footwork – the basic form – is a must, and is dependent on having a gun that fits and shoots where you’re looking.  So you need to know where to look:  how to assess the amount of forward allowance (lead) at different heights and trajectories, then put that into muscle memory so you don’t have to look at your bead (and therefore miss). 
 
Phew!  And that’s only the shooting part – it doesn’t even touch on the hunting part.  Reading the landscape, understanding how and where the birds stack up, what their escape tactics are, where they feed, what time they move; how to walk in line safely with other hunters, as if by osmosis, while at the same time reading the dogs’ body language, pointing your gun barrel in a safe direction and not losing your footing over rough ground.  The novice hunter who has had no training can’t possibly grasp all of this and consequently may respond inappropriately with bravado or fright!
 
I’m not sure if there’s a gender bias that makes it more likely a man will hunt without training than a woman, but I do observe that women tend to be more diffident about putting themselves in situations where they will be embarrassed if they show themselves up or let people down. So, given a choice of going out unprepared or not at all, she is more likely to give it a miss, and maybe never give it another chance.  It’s high time people were able to learn all these hunting and wing shooting skills other than by trial and error! 
 
So why don’t you come to Montana for a four-day hunting retreat, where you will gain the skills and wisdom to become a conscious and competent bird hunter, in a small group where you can go at your own pace.  You’ll make new friends, form special memories and enjoy gracious yet informal hospitality.  We‘re famous for our wide-open landscape and our Big Sky.
 
And a final word to guys:  I’m sure you would also enjoy a training course in bird hunting and shooting skills, served up with great food and wine, and seasoned with plenty of stories (and a Montana-made wee dram).  We’ll happily organize a customized co-ed course for you!

 I've learned over 11 years how true this is, in spite of my being the standard size for an off-the-shelf gun.  I'm 5'10" and 150 lbs.  I have quite a long "in-shoulder" area before I begin to stick out (!), I don't have petite hands and I have a broad face.  I can buy a gun with a LOP of 14.5" and expect it to need very little adjustment.  And yet, even so, I have had trouble with gun fit and it is because of my form!

Shortly after I began to shoot, Bruce generously bought me a custom stock for Christmas.  Off I went to a reputable stock-fitter, Mike Lupold, but Mike took one look at my form and told me to come back when I had developed some consistency in my mount.  I waited a couple of years and persuaded him to make me a stock for my Silver Pigeon, which he duly did - a beautiful maple stock that appears in some photos and was dubbed "the blonde bombshell".  I no longer have it.

Why?  After a few more years of shooting, it didn't fit!  The stock was too short, the grip was wrong and the recoil was hell on my face and middle finger (in fact, I passed the gun on to a shooter friend with a significantly smaller frame and she had none of these issues).

Fast forward to last year.  Several guns later that sort-of fit but had various issues, I sold most of them and decided to get one that did fit.  I was experienced enough to now know what I wanted, and, having consulted Elizabeth, I followed her seemingly outlandish suggestion to try a Krieghoff Parcours, 12 ga.  There was no way I was willing to pay that much for a gun.... until I tried it and was completely blown away by it.  But the point I'm coming to is the gun-fitting part.  

The purchase included a free gun-fitting, so I went off to meet Will Fennell during the Sporting Clays Nationals (even though it was hunting season in Montana!!!!) in San Antonio.  Over the course of two days with Will checking my form, and a couple of practice rounds with Elizabeth, Will got a fair picture of my shooting style and concluded: "I can either fit the gun to your form, which will mean cutting the stock, or you can change your form to fit the gun.  It fits you perfectly when you mount it and swing it without standing back on your heels and arcing your shoulders".  I was flabbergasted!

I chose to "correct" my form, though I didn't actually have to - which is sort of the point, really.  Gun fitters can fit a stock to accommodate a lot of variables, but if you change the variables, the fit will change.  I decided to change the variable of my form and I have been thrilled with this gun ever since.  All it needed in the end was for the adjustable comb to be raised a couple of centimeters and locked into place!  I hunted all season with it, carting around an 8 lb gun that felt comfortable rather than a lighter one that didn't.  I hunted three days at Flying B Ranch in March, 8 hrs a day, and hunted all but one hour with it.  That other hour I carried my much-lighter 28 ga - and developed a blister on my hand where the grip dug in.  

So, Ladies, one of the services we offer at JoH is a gun-fit service.  If you are a new hunter, we give you help to select a gun that more-or-less fits, so that you can develop good form and shoot well while learning what the perfect gun might look like, for you, over time.  We also teach good form, both for sporting clays and for the field.  

Guys, as Elizabeth says in her article, your generous gift of a gun is much appreciated, but please let your discerning partner choose her own gun, with a little help from us!