Your Toughest Shot -- Bird and Setting
 

We are iced in again, so to avoid going stir crazy, I'm going over my hunting journal notes and calculating my shooting success (er...failure?). I don't note everything about all shots taken, but I do note some details about particularly tough shots, whether I make them or not. My notes span over 30 years. I consistently note the difficulty when trying to shoot bobwhite quail in the timber. I did not calculate the percentages, but it's clear from my notes that when quail flush in the timber, they are pretty darned safe from me.

Grouse in relatively new and thick clearcuts (especially in steep mountain terrain), dove with a 40 mph tail wind, and woodcock in the plum thickets are all tough for me. Then there is the shot I almost always miss when I see the bird on the ground before it flushes (happens more with woodcock and grouse, but always hard for me, no matter the bird).

But in the end, quail in the timber is my toughest shot. Thankfully we don't find them there all that often.

Just curious what my colleagues find to be their toughest bird/setting.

The best/toughest shot I ever made was many years ago while dove hunting in late winter. In Tennessee we have a 3 segment dove season with the last being in December. I was hunting a farm that was within walking distance from my home. It was cold and windy and I was sitting in an overgrown fence row beside a cut cornfield trying to stay warm. I was looking out over the field and just happened to glance directly above me and saw a dove with the afterburners on flying from my right to the left. Everything about the shot was uncomfortable, with me being right handed and the dove flying from right to left and the fact that it was directly above me when I saw it made me think it was pretty much a waste of a shotshell. But I took the shot with my 20 gauge Winchester that my dad bought me in high school at the local hardware store and that dove just exploded in a gray & white cloud of feathers! I could take that particular shot 10 times and not make it again, but it has always stayed in my memory some 40 years later. Most of my toughest shots have been misses!

A grouse flushing from up in a tree is always a tough one for me.

Hardest shot? The first bird I killed. A drake ringneck over decoys with my poly-choked 20 gauge 11-48

The first time I drove up the drive at Morrison Pines I thought the quail in those long leaf pines would be a cinch compared to grouse and woodcock in the Upper Peninsula. I could not have been more wrong:shock::shock:

toughest shot
 

Since the quail are gone in my part of Virginia, I hunt grouse. The hardest shot for me is one flushing from a tree branch, the second hardest is one flushing behind me. On the rare occasion when there are more than one, picking the right bird to shoot is still difficult. Like a lot of hunters, I can hit the hard shot and miss the easy one.

woodcock spiraling up through a dense poplar slashing thicket. My brittany holds beautiful points, I always seem to be looking 20 yards ahead, figuring he has a grouse pointed. The first year (2 years ago) I always seemed to shoot to quick, and always seemed to miss. Finally I let the birds get right to the top of the slashing, and then took my shot with much more success. A grouse flying straight at me I have never hit yet, either on the inbound, or outbound:)

The toughest shots for me with any kind of game bird have always been the ones I missed....

Straightaways, crossers, incomers, dropping out of trees, quartering away or in doesn't matter.... heck, I even missed a big longbeard at 30 yards, full choke, with the bead right at the top of his neck.

Birds I've killed when all the odds were stacked against me, at the time seemed so easy when it happened but later when I thought about it I wonder how I ever pulled it off.... :shock:




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A duck seen at a great distance and watched as it approaches, all the time in the world,missed. A duck that surprises me is in trouble. A grouse or woodcock I see before it flushes gets a pass. A grouse roaring down the mountain side side slipping through the trees is a waste of ammo for 50 years but I finnally hit one this year 10 minutes after telling my sons about my frustration with them. It's why we love this game so much. If you got them all what would be the sense of that.

1st. Blue quail running in front of you and the dogs, flushing while your on the run at 40 yards.
2nd. Green winged teal flying from behind you, unseen, then straight away at mach 10.