Not just the birds, but the dogs, the people, the guns, and the land. Here are few from last season to get things started..... Hopefully we can keep this going throughout the season.












































Let's see yours.

Great post/pics Adam and good shooting!!!!
But remember most of us are completely computer illiterate soooo you have to be a little patient with us.

Very cool, I've never seen a quail cover before I guess. Very different than the overgrown and (I think) somewhat spooky overgrown and abandoned farms I hunt grouse and woodcock in. Having a good season thus far.

Opening day Saturday Washington state. Double gun required this trip. We all used different forms of Non-toxic shot and all worked excellent over decoys. My hanloaded bismuth in the 16 ga. 21 ruled the sky.

Thats me on the left, Ted with the MDL 24, and Cooper on the right with the 16ga Savage

This fall

The beaters taking lunch on the grouse moor:



My Chessie making sure no-one trys to steal the bag;



My Chessie again taking time out on a pheasant shoot:



That dog again hogging the lime light with a Sika Stag that it tracked and how it was found:



It will retrieve mink too:



Thinning out the goosanders:

Below are a few shots from this year so far. This first shot is of pheasant opener here in ND. The double gun is mine. Unfortunatly you can't always pick what your friends shoot.


This was the first bird I have taken with my "new" Belgian hammer gun.


Here I am with my dog Daisy, a German Wire Hair pointer, with the gun and bird at my farm.


Some of the landscape we hunt for sharptails.



A couple of friends and Belle, a great English Pointer to hunt behind, while hunting sharptail.


Daisy on point, with a sharptail flushing in front of her.


A hard earned sharptail I got this year.


A brace of ducks from our opener in ND this year.

It's a rare camera that still works after taking pictures of a Wirehair. I have learned my lesson. "Let others take pictures of my pup."

Solid Red Grouse from Gods Country In the Upper Penn of Michigan..

All of these pictures are from last year. I still have two weeks before I get to shoot snipe again.

Skip

Snipehunter, you have some nice guns and a cool duckboat. What kind of boat is it? I'm trying to figure out the terrain you are hunting; flooded pasture, river marsh or salt-marsh? You don't often see a sora rail in the typical bag. I hope the shot of the big gator was from a boat and not where you and that setter were wading...Geo

We can shoot rails from the first of September through the middle of November. There are a couple of weeks when the season is concurrent with snipe season. I don't shoot soras once snipe season is open but I will take a couple beforehand while scouting. I most often shoot shallow, natural lakes but occasionally I will hunt a pasture with standing water. The boat was made by Blue Star. They were in business from 1950 until the early to mid 60's. It is currently primed and waiting for a new coat of paint that will be applied sometime in the next few days.

Skip

You guys see which gun is doing all the 'work' for Skip don't ya???
Yes Sir it's the old Ithaca Flues!!

I shot that Flues twice last season, on opening day of dove season and one day for snipe. It is my only twelve gauge double gun. I got it last year for no particular reason other than a three hundred dollar price tag. I shot it those two days basically to make sure it went "bang" when I pulled the trigger. One odd thing I do is rotate gauges each season. Last year was a twenty gauge year. The year before that I shot sixteens. This year will be twenty-eights and smaller. There is one cheap Spanish gun by Jose Uriguen and a Sterlingworth in the pictures. They are twenty gauge guns I bought last year and I shot them more than anything else. The four-ten I used only for soras and the Grulla only got shot three or four days. The L.C. Smith was also new last year. It is a sixteen gauge and it only got used one day to test it for function. Two of the birds in the bag that day were a right and a left. It won't get shot again until the 2010-11 season.

When I hunt ducks and snipe on the same day I shoot the twenty gauge 101 below for the snipe. In Florida if you are hunting waterfowl you can't have any lead in your possession. That is the only gun I feel comfortable shooting steel through and I won't do that any more than I have to. Even going back to my vehicle at the landing and switching guns and shells wouldn't make me legal.

















Each year we have a "Snipe Rally" during the season. For the last couple of years we have been giving a bird strap to one of the attendees or the host. Don't let the looks of that motley crew fool ya, there are some guys in that group that know how to shoot birds.

My son Austin and Brotherinlaw Jeremy shooting behind a teal last weekend. They ended up getting him. The rest are from years past. Ill be taking a couple of boys hunting on our youth pheasant opener on Sunday.

Adam who are those two beautiful young ladies you're posing with in that picture???

Great pics. Would be real helpful and much easier to view if they were sized to fit the screen.

One more pic, woodcocks and Ideal

One more pic, woodcocks and Ideal

Would that handsome (?) snake be an Eastern Diamondback? Makes bird hunting a potential "Death in the Long Grass" sport....Then there are the "other reptiles"!

Grat pix: guns, birds, folks, dogs, "wildlife"!

Geno,

You can post pics of those big european woodcock all day. I only ever got to spend one day on them but it was a day that will stay with me all my life.

Skip,

Your hunting photos never cease to be a wonder. Sorry we didn't get to make that moor hen hunt last season. I regret it more and more every time we trade an email.

I'm finally going to make it down to Florida on a hunting trip this December. Spending three days near Palm Bay trying to get a shot at Black Bellied and Fulvous Tree Ducks and maybe even the elusive Florida Mallard. I know that one is hotly disputed whether it's just a mottled duck but if I get one down that far south in FL I'm counting it as a separtate species anyway.

Destry

Mike, the snake in my picture is a cottonmouth. I bumped into it while looking for a downed duck. I parted the grass and there he was.

Destry, I hope you have a good time down here. We had our traditional moorhen hunt again the first week of September. Florida ducks are scarce this far north but the black-bellied whistling ducks have expanded their range and we are seeing a few.

Today snipe hunting season opened for me. Both the water and grass are high. It's gonna be a tough year.

Duck hunting has been slow this year but I did manage to collect a banded mallard yesterday. That is the 23rd band of my hunting career. Thought you duck hunters would enjoy the image, gun is one of my 12ga Fox CE's 28".

Skip.......looks like the little gun is working out good for Ya?

Leen's Lodge

Snipe,Bacon and Steak

I didn't realize that cottonmouths or "water moccasins" were that colorful; only have seen one, while fishing in South Carolina. They have a nasty reputation among fishermen; can't imagine they are exactly revered among duck hunters, either. Dogs at risk?

Beautiful photos all. Keep them coming, please.

Skip, I won't dispute you if you say that's a cottonmouth, but ya'll must have some kind of subspecies down there I've never seen. I've been around moccasins and rattlers all my life and, though I've seen moccasins in slightly differing color phases, I've never seen one that comes that close to looking like a rattler. Ordinarily, too, a moccasin at that distance will have it's mouth open showing you why it got it's name, Cottonmouth.
Gorgeous photos, Skip.

Stan, I'd call it a cottonmouth. Most of the grown ones don't show as much pattern as the one pictured, but the little guys do. I'd guess the one Skip pictured was a small one...Geo

Guess so, G. It's been a long time since I bumped into a little one. Ain't I lucky?

Doc, fantastic gun pictures. The name on the sidelock speaks for itself. However, a scalloped boxlock looks about as nice as anything to my eye and the pierced toplever is icing on the cake.

Battle, the little pea shooter did well. It seemed like a couple of birds flew right through my pattern but I expect a little bit of that when shooting 1/2 ounce loads. It was the first time I shot it and it functioned as expected.

Mr. Newborn is correct about younger ones typically being more colorful and that is most definitely a cottonmouth. That snake was right at four feet and it is not real common for one that old to still have such vivid markings. We have a subspecies and the only way I know to differentiate between it and the standard cottonmouth is a thin light border along the dark brown patch on the side of the head.

Another of the birds that have fallen to the thirty-two gauge this year.





Wednesday it was a four-ten that got to go out and play.

Had a good opener here in Southeast Alabama. I hunted with Jeremy, a friend from church, on my neighbors property. Jeremy grew up in Iowa and his only bird hunting experience has been on pheasant and dove.

We went out at first light to listen for coveys. We heard 5 and came back about an hour later and found 2 coveys within 2 hours. After killing 4 birds (3 males, 1 female), we called it a day at 8:30AM. It was warming up pretty quickly and as most of yall know, snakes are prevalent in the pineywoods.

Rusty pointing the first covey of the season.


Hunting singles.


First quail of the season.


Jeremy in the longleaf pineywoods.


Rooster bobwhite.



Jeremy with his first brace of wild bobs.









Thanks for looking!
Adam

Trip to Maine for two days of Ruffed Grouse/Woodcock hunting:

Stuttgart Arkansas live timber Mallards with my Scott 10 ga.



Pretty good one person one day haul...1 longbeard, 4 jakes and 1 hen. Called to the gun after my dog Buster flushed them.



Another Tennessee fall longbeard killed with my 2 & 3/4" Scott 12 ga. a couple of days later.