What sense does it make? Finishing off cripples, for one. Oh, but I forgot. You don't cripple any. Your records prove it.
SRH
Stan, show me a hunter who kills every pheasant cleanly and/or who never loses a crippled wild rooster, and I'll show you someone who hasn't hunted wild pheasants very much. What my records "prove" is that I lose far fewer cripples than were lost in Roster's steel shot lethality tests--and those guys were shooting preserve birds, not wild ones--and there is one heck of a difference in terms of tenacity. The Roster test showed a 12.2% wounding loss rate, which is about one for every 8 birds recovered. (Iowa DNR numbers, based on hunter interviews, is 1 lost for every 10 put on the ground.) The Roster test wounding loss rate dropped to 3% for birds hit inside 30 yards--which is pretty close to my own overall wounding loss rate of 4 to 5%. And it's one reason I prefer to shoot them close: less chance of losing them. I figure a good dog hunting with someone who's a reasonably good shot ought to recover around 20 for every one lost--and that's what my records show. I've had a couple that have been above a 1 to 25 recovery rate. And that's for every bird that's hit, not just my own--assuming my dog is the only one on the ground which it often is, or is the one that attempts the retrieve. I won't brag about my own shooting, but I will brag about my dogs. When I was shooting a lot of pheasants, they were way better than average both finding them in the first place and running down the ones that hit the ground with two good legs. Memory often fails; my hunting notes don't.
Last edited by L. Brown; 09/14/14 04:34 PM.
