To be fair, I think it's more than a little difficult to do a show about wingshooting for a couple reasons:
1. the action is almost certain to be over in a matter of seconds. Imagine trying to film a grouse flush and shot, for example. Or a woodcock. The time from nothing happening to everything's over is a couple or three seconds at most.
2. the cameraman has to be at least as good as the shooter when it comes to framing and lining up on the shot. When I've seen wingshooting shows, it's almost inevitably been a pheasant hunt in open country, where the cameraman can have his focus set at infinity or close to it and taken from a distance, so the bird is easily framed
3. safety. Sometimes the best angle for photographing (because of, for example, sun issues) would be in a direction where it would be unsafe to be standing, i.e., the cameraman would be downrange.
4. low limits and relatively sparse game. I once was fishing Idaho's Henry's Fork at the Forest Service campground downstream from the Railroad Ranch when a film crew for one of the fishing TV shows came through and stopped for a lunch break. We got to talking and they told me it took a full day or often more of filming to get a usable one hour program, i.e., 40-some minutes of content and 20-some of bumpers and commercials. Count the number of fish caught on film in the average fishing show and it's going to be somewhere around a dozen or more per hour. It has to be, to hold the audience interest - they come to watch fish being caught, not casts that do not yield a fish. The same would obtain for a wingshooting show. If one were to try, say, wild grouse hunting on film, imagine how many days of filming it might take to get 5 or 10 usable point-flush-shot-kill-retrieve sequences. Factor in bad weather and that time could double or more. And on the good days, the crew would surely find themselves bumping up against a bag limit - there's no catch-and-release in hunting.
This all leads to another issue - sponsorship. Or, more directly, money. As noted upthread, the one autoloader company sponsors the wingshooting show the commenter saw. Making shows is expensive - easily a million dollars a season or more. If you look at the hunting shows out there, most of them seem to have some commercial tie-in to a lodge or preserve (or big box outdoors store) where the filming took place. In other words, they're mostly well-camouflaged infomercials for the lodge/outfitter/big-box. In that regard, the deer-hunting shows all seem more directed - subtly - at selling the latest gadget that will get you that deer. That, or selling the trip behind the tall fence somewhere in Texas. How many of them are selling "time in the field pays off in game in the bag" or "boot leather kills the most grouse"? To a society where time is precious, telling people the best way to get the game is to spend time on it isn't going to sell anything, let alone the sponsor's product. The average comsumer (I think most of the folks here are a lot more serious/devoted than the average) wants to buy the magic bullet, go out Saturday morning, spend 5 or 6 hours in the field, and come home with a full bag, preferably in time to tailgate the college football game. A miracle gizmo or preserve hunt will give them that (in the case of the gizmo, the hope of it). Telling them to work hard - not so appealing.
And, for that matter, how many commercials are Parker, Fox, LC Smith, and so on going to buy?
The only wingshooting show I remember which was successful in portraying something close to the experience was that one with the english setter, Dash, if I recall his name correctly. But, in that show the dog was the hero and the birds and people his props. Unfortnately, he's gone to doggy heaven....
Last edited by Dave in Maine; 09/03/12 11:11 AM.
