Dale Spartas might be the luckiest guy I know, for I’m very envious of the fine double guns he owns – as well of his Camp Swampy. On second thought Spartas has no doubt simply worked harder than I have – acquiring all those wonderful shotguns – as well as Camp Swampy. Dale and I were staying at Camp Swampy recently, using it as our base camp for hunting Hungarian partridge.
One of the most talked-about items in our new book Serious Grouse Hunting, Book 1 is how to use Google Earth to find bird cover – specifically ruffed grouse and woodcock cover. Here’s a quick primer (some of this material is in the book), followed by a story about our experience using Google Earth while hunting in Maine the first week of October.
Most fantasies are better than the actual experience. Occasionally the opposite is true, a well known fact of hunters around Maryland.
I know that if you want to hunt wild and hard to find pheasants in Montana you have one of two choices, either cold weather or very cold weather, and lots of hard hunting which means a bunch of miles on foot.
The ruffed grouse is to the forest what pheasants are to the grasslands. But unlike the flashier, bigger plains bird, you can’t bully a grouse around. The “we-got-’em-surrounded” mentality that often works with pheasants – big crowds pushing a section of real estate to pinch birds and force them to flight – won’t get you anywhere in the grouse woods. No, this is one bird that requires finesse.
If you own a dog, then the following story will be familiar to you. If not, then perhaps it will inspire you, or at the very least make you chuckle a bit.
It was September 9th, eight days after the West Virginia season opener for mourning doves. At the Shenandoah Valley Sportsmen Club, opening-day hunters had maxed out their limit within hours – arriving home in plenty of time for lunch and chores.
Okay, so I’m an outfitter, and yes, I have a business in Argentina. This article isn’t about any of that. It is about what you need to know if you want to go, and how to figure the cost of going. For 15 of the last 20 years, I was a consumer. I did my research, booked my own flights, paid my money, and went hunting. That changed five years ago, but I believe that, now as an outfitter, with a lot of real world experience, I have a moral and ethical obligation to educate and explain to potential Argentina wing shooting hunters how to put together this hunt of a lifetime and what it really, really costs.
Having hunted most of the species of upland birds in North America, I’ve come to appreciate the qualities of the chukar. Hunting chukar is an exciting adventure that always includes a surprise or two. Chukars are not only fun to hunt, they are also one of the most hearty birds to put down and typically don’t present a head shot on the rise as pheasant tend to do – making them challenging as well.
Since this is my first column for Shotgun Life, a bit of background is probably appropriate. I was raised in New England and have been involved in the outdoor sports since a young man. At one time I wrote a weekly column for a newspaper about hunting and fishing. In recent years I have been in the shooting sports industry as an industry professional managing a company that manufactured sporting goods and imported shotguns from Italy. I just recently decided to return to my first love of photojournalism.
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