I’m a VERY avid bird hunter – primarily because I enjoy working my dogs. I can’t get enough of it. The dogs and I just got back from a three week trip to the NE Sandhills – chasing sharps and chicken – about as “wild” as you can get. Grouse open here tomorrow – we’ll be out there. Phez open next week. We hunt all of the wild seasons.

When the wild seasons are over, I have about 200 birds to kill at my hunting club. Except when I take guests, the dogs and I will harvest all of those birds by scratch hunting – meaning that we will not release birds, but will hunt those that have been released for some time and have survived numerous attempts by dogs and hunter, not to mention regular predators. Is that that same as wild bird hunting? No, it is not. It is close to wild bird hunting? Well, I’m not going to answer that question because that is a subjective judgment on which reasonable people could differ. All I can say is that it is sufficiently challenging to be fun for me and the dogs; and we do tons of very challenging wild bird hunting for various species in various areas of the country. One thing I know for sure – preserve hunting beats the hell out of sitting in front of this computer or watching TV, which is all the wild birds only purists can do off-season while I’m out hunting.

The dogs and I also frequently guide for released birds at the hunting club and some preserves. That experience can vary from simply going from planted bird to planted bird to more interesting scenarios. I enjoy this, too, because it gives me a chance to introduce new folks to our sport by showing them good dog work, helping them learn to shoot, etc – plus it allows me to constantly hone my dogs’ bird handling skills without needing to gun. Partly because of doing this work, my dogs often kill over 1,000 birds/year – that’s a good thing. Finally, this helps keep the Old Man fit enough to hunt wild birds for weekend on end in remote and difficult terrain.

Bottom line – preserves serve an extremely valuable purpose in today’s upland world. For fanatics like me, they take nothing away from wild bird hunting and they allow us to extend our season (joy!) and keep both the dogs and the hunters in top form. For people looking to get involved in the upland life, they provide an open door. When I was young and could kill more phez than I could carry by walking out my front door, most rural boys and young men hunted. That is no longer even remotely possible around here, so why would any young person even think about birds hunting, but for preserves? The only chance that exists to create a fanatic like me is to take kids to a place where they can see good dog work and kill some birds. I’ve killed countless birds in 48 years (except when a prisoner of Uncle Sam) of bird hunting and could care less whether I kill more or not on a given day, but young people don’t think like that. Even a poorly run preserve is better than no preserve, IMHO.