doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Avoiding Two Birds with One Shot

Maybe bust up a covey. Take a clear shot if one separates out, or set a shot off so the dogs think you're in the game, then hunt singles. More fun and dog work than trying to spot them and ground swatting 'em.

Will you be hunting this lease 6 years from now? How 'bout 60 years from now? 6000 years from now? 60,000 years from now? Try to wrap your head around this-there were bobwhite quail in that area, 60,000 years ago. And a few of those coveys went extinct back then, with no help from you, or, Joe.

Funny thing about men, they think that their impact on the natural world and the order of things in it is significant over the course of their individual lifetimes. And, I'm pretty sure it just isn't so.

You have taken steps to avoid wanton slaughter of what remains of the quail population. Good on you. It is a noble effort, but, the 90 percent figure I threw up earlier is a cold, hard, and well researched fact.

I won't argue that you may be hunting a lease too hard-only you can determine that. But, if conditions are right (and, I suspect, that in the area you are hunting, for a variety of reasons, they are not) birds will move back into an area they formerly did, but, no longer use.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

Best,
Ted

Ted I don't doubt that I have a negligible impact on the continent's population of bobwhite.

I don't doubt that I do have a significant impact on my birdlease's population. I gave my case above.

I don't doubt that I have a negligible impact on the continent's population of bobwhite in the year 2030.

I don't doubt that I have a significant impact on my birdlease's population of bobwhite next season.

Between me and my late father we had one lease from 1966 until 2002. I have had this lease since 2004. I have hunted the same coveys year after year, decade after decade. Human predation of bobs can matter in that lease area.

My current leases are 4700 acres and 6300 acres. If I hunt out a covey in the middle of one of those leases a new covey does not instantly spring up in its place the next season. The loss of that covey is negligible in the overall population. It is significant to me.

And I go again to the tribe analogy. The covey has to live through Summer and Winter, nesting predation by 'coons, live bird predation by hawks, drought and flood. They have a system worked out. When there is water standing at the bottom of a certain draw they will always be in that area. When in drought they hang out in a plum thicket three hundred yards North. Before the rancher lets the cattle in they like the grassy ridge. After it is grazed out the bobs move to the bottom of the draw. But that knowledge is passed from generation to generation of bobs. And as bobs don't live through but two or three seasons that covey can go extinct in a hurry.

If I do shoot out a covey there is no doubt that, in a year or twenty, a new covey will start there, survive the learning curve and figure out a way to make a living. So yes, any vacuum I cause will be filled. But if it happens after me and my dogs are dead then I screwed up. Thus the desire to maximize the number of times I can shoot a bob over my pointing dogs leads me to look for a shotgun and load that lower the chance that I will kill two birds with one shot.

Thanks for your comments. I remembered some things I had forgotten in the process of trying to make my point.

Best,

Mike

And I thought I was the only one with this problem. For me it became obvious that my guns fit too well, my loads are too lethal, I have been spending way too much time shooting clay targets honeing my skills and the birds were just plain unlucky. In lieu of changing any of the above the only rational choice is to stop shooting birds on the covey rise and only persue the singles.

Ted,Mike,
I don't have a dog in this fight, but it's been my observation that Ted is correct with the following caveat. Changing land use is more damaging than anything else in my area.When the open pastures and fields with the edges created by the terraces,fencelines,and creeks/branches gave way to big pine tree "orchards"(plantations), the birds went away.What really happened, I think,was it took a much larger area of this kind of land to support a covey.However, when the trees get larger and are thinned a couple of times,the land can be agressively managed for birds.This can be pretty expensive and be beyond the means of many hunters.
Mike

It seems clear that there are two schools of thought here:
(1) What difference does it make in the long term?
(2) I'd rather conserve my brood stock for better weather conditions so when the rains return my flock will recover faster.

Mike obviously follows the latter principle. The best two suggestions so far are forego the covey shot and chase singles, and alternatively to reverse roles with your shooting student and learn to shoot badly...Geo

Hey Mike:

I took this picture on the lease yesterday. Trees aren't a problem.



The population of the 900 square mile county is 3,200 so encroachment isn't a problem.

The land has been ranchland for about a hundred years so no land use changes.

Craig, Pilgrim, and TwiceBarrel - all good suggestions. Thanks.

Good idea George. I think I could closely simulate his shooting by closing the eye over the barrel. If that doesn't work I will try closing both of them.

Glad to find someone else afflicted with these circumstances. Unless someone has experienced this they just can't empathize - isn't that the way you find it Twice?

I would say:

1)I agree with Ted that what I do doesn't make any difference in the long run in the total world population of bobwhites.

2)I believe what I do this season on my lease can and often does make a significant difference in that lease's next season's crop of birds.

Ted and I just disagree on the time that Nature takes to fill that abhorrible vacuum I create on my lease when I kill too many birds or shoot out a covey.