May 17, 2012

Pass Along PDJ

A friend of mine once accused me of having a Texas-quail-low-humidity-over-setters-on-Friday-afternoons shotgun, his point being that I maybe had gone a little overboard over the years accumulating shotguns for special purposes. I don’t have a gun like that, of course. I sold it, selling or trading shotguns being the best way I know of to buy other shotguns. Besides, I had no way of knowing if I’d even be hunting on any Fridays.
But, you know, I wouldn’t play golf with one club (even though you can’t call what I do, strictly speaking, golf) because my driver can’t do what my pitching wedge does and vice versa, and I can’t expect my Michigan brush-country woodcock gun to be of much use on late season South Dakota pheasants. And vice versa.

As the title more than implies, I’m going to talk about prairie shotguns, those guns used in the Big Open for birds other than pheasants, mainly Huns, sharptails, and prairie chickens. These are birds and it’s a place that calls for some specialization. Let’s take the birds first.

Huns can be tough to kill at times, especially late in the season when, as Ben Williams says, the September Squeakers have turned into November Rockets. I don’t mean because of the distance of the shots they offer as the season progresses, though that’s a major factor. I mean the birds need to be hit solidly. Sharptails and chickens, on the other hand, don’t have to be hit with a hammer to bring them down – a few shot of moderate size will usually do it. But that is where range comes in.

Ranges on the prairies are deceiving. The air is usually clearer than what you may be used to, and there are few trees or other things sticking up nearby to give you some perspective. If you haven’t spent much time there, one of the first things you should do is pace off 40 yards and try to remember what it looks like. To me, 40 looks like 25, and 60 looks like 40. I remember one hunt I was on in Montana. It was a foggy morning, and visibility was limited to maybe 100 or 150 yards. The dogs bumped a single Hun that crossed in front of me at about 30 yards, and I thought I’d led it perfectly, but I missed. The fellow I was with asked me why I was shooting at a sharptail 80 yards away.

So, long – late in the season, extreme – ranges mean tight chokes and maybe larger shot to retain downrange energy. Those things together usually mean a bigger gauge. But early season birds are lightly feathered and fattened and a lot more civilized about staying put until we get close. So that could mean lighter loads, open chokes, which usually equals smaller gauges.

It is a long way between birds in normal years, and if you miss a couple, it gets longer. And the miles get longer as the calendar pages turn. Guns become anchors, shotshells in your pocket feel like free weights, your bootlaces seem to weigh a pound each. Early season, no problem – light gun, small gauge – a 20, maybe – and comparatively plentiful, young, uneducated birds. Late season, bigger gun, birds more wary, fewer chances, more carrying. So weight isn’t that big a deal until later in the season when you may have to switch to a bigger gun. Then it can be a very big deal, especially if you are on the sundown side of 50 and the land you’re hunting has a lot of ups and downs.

Ben Williams likely has more experience hunting prairie birds over pointing dogs than any man alive. For years he hunted all year with a 20-gauge and just compensated for the gradually increasing ranges by increasing shot load, ending the season, he told me, often shooting three-inch magnums at wide-flushing Huns. Today, he starts the season off with a nice little side-by-side 28-gauge, and closes it with a 16. Both of them are light – the 28-gauge a shade under five pounds, the 16 barely six. That will show you how the ranges increase as the season progresses.

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