Your Toughest Shot -- Bird and Setting

[Reggie B]

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!

[C.O.B.]

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