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Virginia Trying to Allow Sunday Hunts

Virginia Trying to Allow Sunday Hunts

Virginia is one of several states that still has a ban on Sunday hunting, but the Virginia Board of Game and Inland Fisheries did its part to try and change that. At its June meeting, the board passed a resolution supporting Sunday hunting – which appears to be all they can do: The ban on […]

June 28, 2011 | By | Reply More
UT Extends Upland Season

UT Extends Upland Season

Plus: Grouse Permits Underway, Youth Bird Hunts The length of Utah’s upland season is now extended – though the UT DNR hasn’t yet  posted what the extension is and says it’s only for “most of Utah’s upland game species.” The number of birds and bunnies you can have in your possession has also increased, though […]

June 27, 2011 | By | 1 Reply More
Breaking: Garmin Buys Tri-Tronics

Breaking: Garmin Buys Tri-Tronics

Just like it sounds in the headline – Garmin Ltd. is buying Tri-Tronics, a little consolidation in the dog gear world. Here are some details from the press release. Check them out, leave any questions for the companies in the comments section and we’ll get them asked next week. > Garmin announced that one of […]

June 24, 2011 | By | Reply More
More Thoughts on Ultimate Ruffie Shells

More Thoughts on Ultimate Ruffie Shells

Last month we asked for your thoughts about designing the ultimate ruffed grouse shells (plural). Based on those comments (thanks!) plus ones in a shotgunworld.com thread we started, we wanted to update things – from our perspective, of course. In no particular order:

June 22, 2011 | By | 11 Replies More
Check Out These 5 Crazy Pheasants!

Check Out These 5 Crazy Pheasants!

Looks like known pheasant species number somewhere above 30 – apparently the experts disagree on the exact number, or at least websites do…. Not sure if anyone has hunted ’em all, or whether you can, or how other species run or flush, but here are five pheasant species that mostly look too garishly colored – […]

June 17, 2011 | By | 1 Reply More
Dogs Hunt, Humans Shoot?

Dogs Hunt, Humans Shoot?

We like to hunt. To us that means getting out there and walking (hard), seeing some birds fly, putting some of them on the ground. That’s equally true whether we’re hunting without a dog or over a dog. As we say in Serious Grouse Hunting, Book 1, a dog is only as good as where […]

June 16, 2011 | By | 1 Reply More
A Reader’s Bad Gun Experience

A Reader’s Bad Gun Experience

We received an email from a Serious hunter the other day which stated the following. Give it a read, and let us know where you come down on it. I [bought and] patterned a CZ-Upland Hunter what with unsatisfactory results. I then set it up on a bench rest with sandbags. My shotgun patterned the […]

June 10, 2011 | By | 20 Replies More
What To Look For First In a Dog?

What To Look For First In a Dog?

by Jay Brendan has a Lab pup, so he’s cast his dog vote. Me, I’m still undecided. My head’s spinning with all the breeds, all the recommendations, all the just plain love this or that hunter has for this or that dog. Today I had a long, very educational conversation with grouse dog master Dick […]

June 8, 2011 | By | 17 Replies More
Are Bird Forecasts More Bad Than Good?

Are Bird Forecasts More Bad Than Good?

In a recent blog post, Bob St. Pierre at Pheasants Forever asked whether the preseason pheasant forecast influences whether we all hunt. A good question, one that led to more questions, like: > Do counts of any kind (e.g., drumming) influence whether or where you hunt? > Should they? > Do these forecasts do more […]

June 3, 2011 | By | 2 Replies More
Do You Hunt With a Hemingway?

Do You Hunt With a Hemingway?

Ernest Hemingway lived when there was such a thing as a “playboy outdoorsman.” Sounds fun, but part of living that life is having a good-sized ego. That means rivals, like Zane Grey, but also a competitiveness that goes beyond buying the first beer or maybe having to fix the grub that night at camp. And […]

May 26, 2011 | By | Reply More
Help Us Plan the 2011-12 Serious Bird Tour!

Help Us Plan the 2011-12 Serious Bird Tour!

How do you keep your Serious birdin’ spirits up in the summer months? Well, besides spending time with the dog, smacking some clays and trying to stay in shape, for us there’s…trip-planning.   If you’re lucky enough to hunt right outside your door, or close to it, great. But many of us have to jump […]

May 24, 2011 | By | 6 Replies More
Will We Finally Be Getting More Grouse?

Will We Finally Be Getting More Grouse?

The answer for growing more ruffed grouse is the same for all gamebirds: more habitat. No secret there. And in the case of grouse, that means cut trees. Cut ’em! They’ll grow back! And in the meantime, grouse and basically everything that lives in a forest will benefit. But that’s not as easy nor logical […]

May 19, 2011 | By | 5 Replies More
Why Waxed Cotton Ain’t Our Thing

Why Waxed Cotton Ain’t Our Thing

We wear a lot of adventure-type clothes. Stuff made by Patagonia, SmartWool and those kind of manufacturers. Not cheap but works so much better than the vast majority of clothes oriented to hunters, much of which are not for ACTIVE hunters (they’re for tree-hangers). When you’re hunting all day actively, you want to wear stuff […]

May 17, 2011 | By | 8 Replies More
Preserves: Last Bastion or First Line?

Preserves: Last Bastion or First Line?

Recently Field & Stream and Quail Forever blogger Chad Love wrote a fascinating post about training a dog to hunt bird preserves. You might think your field-trained dog would be all that and a bag of chips at a preserve, and you may be right when it comes to bird-finding – but there’s more to […]

May 12, 2011 | By | Reply More
Would You Hunt With a Pink Gun?

Would You Hunt With a Pink Gun?

Would you? Probably not, unless maybe it was the only one you had and the birds were daring you to get out of the truck and hunt. How about pink brush pants? No? Well then, how about hunting with a poodle?

May 11, 2011 | By | 6 Replies More
Clay Sports: Can They Really Help?

Clay Sports: Can They Really Help?

by Jay A section header in our grouse book is “Forget Everything You Learned in the Clay Sports,” except the mount. That keeps coming back to me when I read shooting tips emailed to me from shotgunlife.com. They’re great tips (some of them), but in a hunting context they’re downright laughable. Examples:

May 10, 2011 | By | 2 Replies More
Grouse Shells: What Would You Like?

Grouse Shells: What Would You Like?

We’re in the process of designing our own shells for ruffed grouse. “Designing” doesn’t mean the engineering parts since neither of us is a reloader. It means the specs. Why are we doing it? Hunters can find upland shells and pheasant shells – and even shells designed for the different clay disciplines – but no […]

May 5, 2011 | By | 17 Replies More
Can You Go from 1 Trigger to 2?

Can You Go from 1 Trigger to 2?

A few years back, Jay transferred a sweet Rizzini 16ga O/U from one Cabela’s gun room to another, and Brendan went along to take a look at it. When Jay got it in his hands, it became painfully apparent that he didn’t take a good enough look at the photos because the gun had two […]

May 3, 2011 | By | 7 Replies More
Rabbits, Cutting Trees and Birds

Rabbits, Cutting Trees and Birds

We’re still amazed – literally – that the New England cottontail rabbit is a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act. The cottontail freakin’ rabbit! Okay, not the similar eastern cottontail, but still. And what’s the issue? Apparently people – including people we all know – think it’s “cruel” or “ugly” to cut trees. […]

April 29, 2011 | By | 4 Replies More
New Fiocchi Tracer Rounds: Cool!

New Fiocchi Tracer Rounds: Cool!

“Where were you?” “Behind.” We’ve said that to each other on sporting clays courses and in the field more times than we care to remember – “behind” as in behind the bird. If only we had 20 shots and tracer rounds so, like members of our esteemed armed forces, we could walk the rounds into […]

April 27, 2011 | By | 3 Replies More