fellas, last saturday i watched some fellas out on the forshore of the brunswick pt. blasting away at the snows at 200 plus yards.for the benefit of the unknowing a shotguns effective range is 40 yards, oh sure you have all made shots of 50 and sometimes 60 yards but not that often. consider this, the birds have full plummage this time of year after the cold of winter and are much harder to kill, that steel shot losses energy after 30 yards, and if you let a few flocks go by the later flocks will follow behind at a much lower flight because the birds that left in front of them didnt get shot at,hence giving you a far better opportunity with these birds. this time of year they are wary and have seen quite a bit of shotting so they are on the look out.for example i had 400 decoys out on saturday and didnt get any shotting till i fixed 2 decoys that had fallen over. just my 2cents....fowl
not a paticularly good shot as we were hampered by eagles of all things. every time a flock set up on the decoys a eagle would come along and spook the incoming birds,and as i said a couple of fowled up decoys kind of buggered us up. i have lived in delta all my life and have never seen so many eagles. out watching the brant hunters in boundary bay yesterday i couldnt believe the number of eagles on the foreshore,i think this could be the start of a new problem as every time we started to call ,eagles would appear and its hard to get the birds to decoy without calling. having said that they chase the brant of the foreshore and often out to the decoys ....fowl
no, we got birds its just that it wasnt in the numbers we were use to in the fall.they have seen all manner of decoy spreads up and down the coast and are much more wary.having said that you can get within ten yards of them in richmond at any given park they are frequenting as they know they wouldnt be harmed....fowl
I suffered more than my share of frustration watching them fly over me !! Couldn't pull any birds out of many flocks when they have their eyes on a field of a thousand birds. Very cool watching a flock of a few thousand birds lift off the field at the same time though.
its hard to compete with live decoys alright. when ever possible we try to kick them out if they are within sight of our decoys,having said that its good to be between two flocks of birds....fowl
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