Originally posted by KY Jon:
Well some people are all about quanity and some are about quality. Reserves tend to cater to those who want to kill a large bag limit, fairly easily. No sin in this but it is like dating a hooker and thinking that she went ot bed with you because you got lucky. It is a bussiness, not a labor of love, same for the reserves.
Many with small land areas are very limited in what they can do. Cover and realistic hunting situations are impossible to present very well in less than several hundred acres. Not trying to be a snob but cover, safe rest areas and multiple feed plots take up a lot of space. If a reserve has one feed plots, two areas of cover and no areas that birds are safe from hunter then finding them is about a simple as 1,2,3 and just about as much fun.
The only thing less fun than a poor reserve is being the hunter at a feild trial. Here Bob throw that duck up in front of me so I can kill it for the dog. Now wait until I can not miss. Throw it that direction. Wait until the dog is looking at us. No fun for at all in this. Might as well ring their necks and shoot blanks.
KY,
I can't buy into a number of your points. The preserve I go to is over 1000 acres, has wild birds on and all around it, and the owners go to great lengths to make the experience as much like the real thing as possible. Plus, many times it is the "real thing" as wild birds are taken. So are birds that have been out for several weeks or even months.
As for "loading up", I think you've just not seen preserve hunting done in a quality manner. Many hunters will show up late-morning or early afternoon and spend 3 or 4 hours walking in order to get a bird or two. And the count doesn't matter to them, as it provides a way to get out in the outdoors with their dog and do something they both really enjoy. What's wrong with that?
I think it's really neat to go out to my preserve in late January or February, when all of the wild season's are over, and bag a couple of birds that have been out for a number of months. It's a lot of fun, and not too far off from the real thing.
And it beats setting behind a computer and talking about it.
Hunting wild bird hunting is wonderful, and I love it tremendously. But, preserve hunting adds quality hunt days to both ends of my (and my dogs)season, and has done so for many years.
I don't see the need to put down preserves by those who claim to be "wild birds" only hunters. Without preserves our hunting sport, and the number of hunting brothers we would have, would be dimenished considerably.
And, so would all those wild bird counts in South Dakota.
