Home Forums Birds & Dogs Shotguns Humbling. Very humbling.

We have a snow bird at our range, shoots a 410 Rem 870, with a release trigger, and he is a lefty shooting a righty gun. Talk about handicapping yourself. He does pretty good with it though. In the 3 years or so I have seen him out there when he is around, that is the only gun I have seen him shoot.

battue, Doves, our early birds are White Wing, then the mourning doves and collared doves.

Georgia piney woods Quail are fun and a great place to get young dogs started on birds, most of the Quail are pen raised and planted before the hunts. All our birds are wild, our hunts are much different than the plantation hunts, we use our gun trucks with a driver, dog handler, helper, and 3 hunters, 10 dogs per truck plus 2 out riders on horse back, per truck.

The Georgia, Florida, Quail Unlimited, guy's come here for a couple of hunts every year, fun guy's to hunt with, it takes them a couple of hunts to catch up with our wild birds, as our birds are much faster than pen raised and flush much different than pen raised birds.

If I had my choice all i would do is bird hunt, but the big game is also a big part of what i do. Hell I can't gripe, i hunt 6-7 months every year, and spend the rest of the year getting ready to hunt again next season.

I'm to lazy to work, and to chicken to steal so I hunt for a living, Rio7

Rio,

I hunted on Pineland Plantation...it is not a commercial operation, and.you won’t find a single pen raised or planted Quail on the entire place. Used to shoot sporting and travel around with the owners Daughter which was the only reason I was invited to hunt there a few times. Tall cotton it was, because one can't pay to hunt there and some have tried....

The owner single handily originally funded the Albany Quail Project-Tall Timbers research station. Finally some of the other private plantation owners saw his results and joined in. And yes the Wild ones are much faster than the planted ones....and to keep it on track, I'm glad they didn't make me use a .410.

They have also ran the National Bird Dog Championship on Pineland more than once.

I understand the rather Bird hunt than work situation you have carved out for yourself. Congratulations!!!!


Addition: Have to correct myself on the National Bird Dog Championship...They have ran big trials there, but on looking it up, I can't find that the National was ever ran there..

Shoots a 410 with a release trigger. Pour guy must have developed one hell of a flinch to need to go that route. I've seen some bad flinch habits come out of handicap trap shooters, but none that bad!

H&R Topper .410 was the gun my brother learned to hunt with. Then me. Later in my nephew used it for his first quail hunt. He seldom missed with it.

Recoil really has very little to do with flinching. It’s almost always panic and or lost sight of the target.

The more one piles up the empties, the more ways they can stumble into a flinch....Recoil is only one of them....

I shoot a 410 skeet/5-stand combo league in the winter. 10 rounds of each January through March can be challenging. There are two divisions "Pro" with a trophy for top gun and "Bragging Rights" which gets your name in the end of season flyer. It is a fun league and a Minnesota winter doesn't add much more difficulty for skeet but it makes the 5-stand more challenging.

One wins the division by shooting well on the 5-stand but loses it by shooting poorly on skeet. Skeet averages for Pro need to top 23 to be competitive while BR will usually win with something between 21.5 and 22. 5-stand is not predictable like skeet as there are three courses with positions and target rotations being switched around.

My Citori 410 was my "go to" for woodcock when it opened on Sept 1. For quarry that seldom presented a shot greater than 20 yards it worked great. I've shot a fair number of ruffed grouse and a few pheasants with either that gun or an Iver Johnson single shot but it is much more difficult than other birds. It's best use for birds may be early season sharptails and prairie chickens as one can often get pretty close to them, they aren't overly tough birds, they aren't noted runners, and the habitat isn't thick enough to hinder a dog from running down a cripple.

My primary uses for a 410 is dog training and pest control. The shot charge of a 410 is not very damaging on pen raised quail and pigeons so one does not tear up a bird much if a shot has to be taken quickly. A 410 loaded with 9 or 10 shot is pretty effective for jump shooting English sparrows from birdhouses though a little light for starlings. My wife likes it for use on rabbits and red squirrels raiding her gardens.

A 410 is not a "better" choice in most cases but it is effective for those that know and understand its limitations and work within those limits. It is also a fun, though often frustrating, choice for many clay situations.