The right ammo, correct shot can avoid crippling birds
It was a warm early October afternoon as I walked down a trail with Lexi blazing through the cover.
I was about a year recovered from a back injury, and it was about the time my knees began to seriously fail me. The bird numbers had dropped seriously from a couple years ago. Lexi and I had hunted a lot that day and finally we had our first point.
A nice red-phased grouse flushed and flew straight at me, passing five feet to my left and 10 feet high. I turned — and just like a station seven skeet low house shot — covered the bird with my pattern.
Its wings skipped a couple beats, and a cloud of feathers marked the hit, but the bird flew on, out over a large cattail and willow swamp and died never to be found.
To my knowledge, that is the only grouse that I have ever lost after hitting. Until that time, when asked what shot size or choke with a certain gauge do I use for grouse or woodcock or pheasant, I would respond with the yellow ones for 20 gauge, the red ones for 12 gauge.
The way you kill upland birds with a shotgun is to place your pattern in front of the birds and let them fly into it. I’m here to tell you that 7½ shot in lead will kill on a passing shot from much farther away than you would expect. But going away is another thing. Since that time, I’ve upped my shot size to six shot because it always breaks wing bones.
It’s called a cripple. And, in the upland bird hunting world, pheasants account for most of the cripples. Crippled pheasant can be the hardest to put in the game bag.
They come from taking shots at birds outside of the hunter’s effective range, and they come from not leading the bird enough.
A whole lot of crippling occurs in waterfowl hunting; we will cover that another day.
Crippling means lost game. Not all are found, especially pheasants. They will even avoid a dog’s telling nose from time to time. If they can run, they can evade, yet those that escape will certainly die. That’s never the goal. The goal is a quick, painless death that puts fowl on the table.
Of course, a bit of practice in the offseason helps increase shooter proficiency. Using a shot size that will break wing bones and leg bones makes game easier to retrieve. A dog will always find far more cripples than 10 human hunters will. These are some of the things we can do to reduce cripple loss. But there is a change coming in the next 10 years or sooner. I can easily foresee the day when hunting on public land will require the use of nontoxic shot like waterfowl hunting does. And this is the single greatest cause of cripples in waterfowl hunting. If you are out hunting pheasant, sharptail, huns, even quail in a federal waterfowl area, you have been required to use nontoxic for some time. The solution most hunters go with are two hunting vests — one set up with lead shot shells for private land and the other set up for public areas requiring nontoxic.
And I know more than one hunter just made the switch to nontoxic ammo while upland hunting simply to avoid this hassle. If they would encounter a wood duck on a walk, they tell me they can take a shot.
When I went back to six shot for upland birds, I picked up some of the newer game loads with different shaped shot for breaking bones. I didn’t notice that much of a difference from regular lead shot, speaking well to the proficiency of lead shot.
I did notice a major difference with the same type of ammo in steel shot versus regular steel shot — illustrating just how poor steel shot is compared to shot like lead.
There are alternatives to steel shot that are nontoxic. But they cost more than traditional lead ammo. Some of those alternatives have ballistics better than lead.
I’m not planning on discussing the cost of nontoxic shot vs. lead because if nontoxic shot becomes the norm we are all going to have take up croquet or something.
We all want to retrieve the game we shoot. We don’t like losing cripples. So we need to start having these discussions.
THROUGH A
DECOY’S
E
YE
CHUCK K OLAR LOCAL O UTDOORSMAN
