I currently own two shotguns – a 20-gauge that I bought last year and a 12-gauge that I bought this year. Both are Benellis. The 20 a Montefeltro and the 12 an Ethos. I’d been alternating guns a bit this season but recently noticed a trend. When I carry the 12 gauge I don’t see any birds. I mean none. I haven’t even fired a shot out of that thing in the field. When I carry the 20-gauge I see birds and have shot all my birds this year with it. Now I’m superstitious and am sticking to the 20 the rest of the season.
Tag Archives: Hunting
Lots of bird hunting this past month
In the last month since I got home from my Idaho deer hunt I’ve been spending a lot of time out bird hunting with Lira. So much time, in fact, that I haven’t been fishing for a month now. We’ve been spending time at Cooke Canyon in Ellensburg and several of the Snoqualmie Wildlife Areas on the west side. Lira has gotten better and better at finding birds, holding point and retrieving over this month, it has been really fun just watching her progress. She’s also graduated from needing to be leashed up to being able to be free and, for the most part she listens. She definitely would just as soon go out and play with other dogs as hunt though, it takes some prodding and a few zaps to get her out of play mode into hunt mode first thing in the morning.
First buck
A few days ago I shot my first buck and must admit I had very mixed emotions about the experience which for me really began several years ago. When I got diagnosed with SIBO and had to switch from a vegan/vegetarian to Paleo diet I made the decision to fully embrace the Paleo lifestyle and in March of 2015 part of that became taking up hunting again. It all started when I re-read The Paleo Manifesto and the chapter where John Durant decides to go deer hunting to supply his own food. I grew up hunting in Iowa and had indeed supplied my own food before so I knew I could do it. But, I grew up hunting birds, rabbits and squirrels and while Dad had gone deer hunting I had never been along. After my first bird hunt in 30+ years I began looking into big game hunting since the amount of freezer stocked is way higher than with small game. Within a month I had read several books on deer hunting and was contemplating hunting deer.
Training Lira
Lira with a pigeon she flushed and caught
Two months ago Catherine and I headed to Portland to pick up our new pup, an Australian Labradoodle that we named Lira (Lira means River in aboriginal Australian). These last few months have been interesting as we have taken on training Lira not only to be a companion in the house but also a bird dog. She just turned 5 months old a few days ago and looking back we can really see how far she’s come in just a few months time. When we picked Lira up she basically knew NO and OFF and that was about it, she wasn’t totally crate trained or housebroken yet.
What I do when everything is flooding
The weather has gone to hell rapidly this fall and today we are on the third big storm and flood of the last few weeks, kind of crazy. Not much fishing opportunities around here at the moment so what is a fisherman to do? Well, over the last month I’ve managed to get in some great fishing off Catalina Island in SoCal and several good hunts to gather food as well as fly tying material.
Cooke Canyon Pheasant Hunting
In mid-October Chris and I went over to Cooke Canyon to go on the first bird hunting trip of the season. We had pretty much perfect conditions, sunny and calm in Ellensburg with short-sleeve weather. We started the morning doing a bit of trap shooting and I SUCKED to say the least, I think I hit 3 clays in about 30 shots, not a good percentage. Chris, on the other hand, was spot on hitting about 95% accuracy so between the two of us we stood a chance. We hit the field and did indeed find birds and get some, we ended up with five of the seven birds that day, not bad for a first trip out of the year. I vowed to hit the trap field.
To dog or not to dog
This past few months we’ve been discussing whether or not to get a dog, specifically a bird dog. After my hunting excursion this spring I decided you kind of need a dog here, the terrain here is nothing like the marches through Iowa cornfields that I grew up hunting and a dog seems pretty essential. I also miss Isan and would like to have a dog companion around since I’m a bit more house bound than I’m used to being.
I decided to turn this into a whole research project so we began investigating breeds before settling in on a German Shorthair Pointer. This is a good bird dog, a good family dog and a very athletic dog perfect for hiking or trail running. Catherine ran into a client that has a GSP and absolutely loves the dog, it is their child. She gave us a bunch of resources and this began a search for breeders and trainers in the area plus a bunch of reading about dog training for a gun dog. Luckily the Pheasants Forever magazine this quarter was all about dogs so I got a bunch of resources from it. I located Sage Brush Gun Dogs in Ellensburg which raises and trains GSPs, I also know that our guide from Red’s just had pups too that are in the same line as Katie above. I just finished reading The Ultimate Guide to Bird Dog Training and Wing & Shot to get an idea of what would be involved with training one of these dogs, both excellent books that gives you a very sobering look at how much work and time is involved in developing a bird dog.
Hunting deer???
After I decided take up hunting again this year for birds the next thing that I had thought about was moving up to big mammals. I got quite a bit of venison and antelope from my friend Tom and it was excellent to say the least, made me want more. I also have to purchase a quarter beef and then some each year, a lamb and a whole pig to get me through the year in meat, it would be great to replace some of that with a deer, an antelope or even better an elk. Shooting birds, however, is much easier than shooting a large mammal and the prospect of taking a deer has forced me to do some reading and soul searching on the matter. The deadline is coming soon, if I want to try and hunt deer this fall I need to get my name in the draws next month in just a few weeks then I need to get myself geared up and ready to go.
Buddhism and Hunting
Thirty six years ago when I started practicing Zen Buddhism I gave up meat eating, hunting and fishing to become a “good Buddhist” vegetarian. I had an on and off thing with fishing, I stopped for years, picked it up again as exclusively a Catch & Release practice, stopped it again, then picked it back up again. I never picked up hunting or eating meat again until this last year. When forced out of my vegetarian diet by SIBO I decided that if I was going to eat meat then I was going to participate in the taking of that meat or fish so I began killing fish and recently, killing animals, for food.
Getting back into hunting
End of a good day, the dog is tired out.
When I first had to go from vegetarian to Paleo I made the decision that I was going to have to take responsibility for eating animals and do some of the killing of them myself. This started with fish last spring, when I began killing stocker trout for dinner. It was not an easy decision to make but I felt it was the right one. Re-reading The Paleo Manifesto this winter I got to the section on hunting and decided that now was the time to take the gathering of my own food a step further and get back into hunting for meat.