[quote=pete53] anyone who feels clay birds are easy has not been shooting clay birds much, i have hunted with my share of bird hunters and the best clay bird shooters have always been the better wing shot when i was hunting and the guys who claim clay birds are easy compared to real birds have always been a poor wing shooter and trap shooter always.[/quote
My Cajun business pard loves to hunt ducks. His jet pilot son is a crack shot with clays, the old man, not so much. Boy beats him pretty bad.
BUT, if you put feathers on the target, it smells like gumbo to him. He rarely misses ducks. Not sure the son could compete. I asked the difference. He replied, you can't eat clay birds. So, I guess it depends a lot on the motivation of the shooter. And, BTW, he really knows how to cook those ducks (about everything else, come to think about it....)
Never bet against a Cajun killing something to eat. You'd probably lose that one.
DF
Pete,
Would like to know how much you hunt birds. My experience has been the opposite--that the hunters who shoot LOTS of birds are often better wingshots than those who shoot lots of clays. Of course, if most of the people you know don't hunt birds much, then that's an obvious reason they can't hit them as well.
Dirtfarmer's answer is one of the reasons SOME bird hunters miss far fewer edible birds than clays.
Big groups of hunters will cause an awful lot of folks to rush their shots in order to "get the bird" before the other hunters. Then of course there's the excitement of the flush. I didn't see a ruffed grouse until I was in my early 20's, I grew up shooting pheasants, huns, and sharptails in the wide-open prairie. When prairie-birds flush, I relax, take my time (relative term) and let the bird get to a point that I'm not going to "blow-it-up" by shooting too close. While they make a lot of noise and beat their wings fast, rising huns, sharps, and roosters don't really fly all that fast, there's time if you take it. Ruffed grouse on the other hand still unhinge me a bit and I often shoot well before I'm ahead of the bird trying to beat them to "cover". Ruffed grouse humble me significantly, even when the dog lets me know they're close or I see them prior to the flush.
Clay pigeons while certainly smaller and faster than the vast majority of game birds are predictable regarding the where/when of them and a shooter can at least get their feet set and body positioned for a full-body swing even if they start with a low-gun, they're more ready than most game-bird flushes, even planted birds.
A "natural" shotgun shooter likely has excellent hand/eye coordination. Their hands and body will get the gun where their eyes tells them it needs to be.
