It is especially handy when watering the dogs or messing with their boots or taking pictures of my shooting student Joe Wood missing birds.
Get rid of the dogs,.......... hunt in peace and quiet and offload the whistles and bags, water, food, saliva wipes and other doggie paraphenelia
then you won't need a sling or swivels......and the associated ugliness it adds........you will also see a lot more game of all types......
.........just an opinion......
Your opinion runs smack into the research by the late Gordon Gullion when it comes to grouse hunting. Over a ten year period of study in central MN, it was discovered that the most successful combination for grouse hunting was a pair of hunters and a single dog. Breed of dog didn't matter, but dogless hunting of any sort was farther down the success chart.
My own experience agrees with this study. Several years past, my elderly setter locked up on a stunning point in a low stubble field in southwestern MN. I never took the gun off my shoulder, and simply enjoyed her intensity for perhaps half a dozen minutes, long enough for a crew of hunters in a jeep to stop and enjoy it as well. After the hen flushed, we walked back to the car, and the driver rolled down the window and asked why I didn't take the gun off my shoulder and get ready for the bird to flush?
I told him "the dog told me it was a hen". He couldn't comprehend how that was so. But a point for that long, that late in the season, usually is a hen.
They were dogless. BIrdless, too. Late season pheasant hunting, without a dog, is mostly hiking.
Best,
Ted
