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2 cents worth on the clays vs hunters thing. had a customer who was a skeet shooter, never hunted. took me skeet shooting. the best thing i had for this was a 16 ga m-12 in ic. the first time around, the only clays i hit were the ones from the top of the circle. i got all of them. they were like field shots.

the second time, did much better. never got the hang of the 8th position.

I hear you. I was next door in York County, and a good bit in Northumberland County. Hunting in central/western Maryland was mostly for quail. When they lifted the bounties on foxes and hawks, and the farmers bought into no-till farming, new generations of pesticides, and eradication of fence rows, the quail disappeared.

Hunting was so bountiful that it never crossed our gang's minds to shoot skeet or trap instead, except as a novelty. The guys I knew who were dedicated trap shooters were none of them hunters. Sporting Clays didn't exist back then.

Then there were the live pigeon shoots and the guys who were plugged into that sport. A whole 'nother world was that.

Gonahh....

Agree that we had something special here in Pa.....On top of what you mentioned, you could have 30 to 40 flush days on Ruffed Grouse....And the Grouse hung on longer than the Pheasants or Quail.

Used to travel the turnpike thru the areas you mentioned and you were more likely to find Pheasants hit by cars than Deer. Travel some of that land today, especially thru some of the Amish country were land use has changed little....and you will have to look hard for a Pheasant. Great habitat...and the Amish are not killing them all...as they are often blamed to do on anything huntable. Something other than hunting/habitat is responsible for wild Bird numbers declining.

Even on the edges of our mill towns in Westmoreland we had Pheasants and Grouse....Edges where there was limited farming. The edges of RR tracks that passed thru wood had Grouse and Pheasants in huntable numbers. Then slowly gone for the most part.

Mentioned the same to more than one Game Warden and was told Pheasants need big corn fields....Didn't believe we ever could find limits in large weed patches bordered by woods. Some also told me....Turkeys can only populate in the big woods....well now they are in downtown Pittsburgh. Daughter lives in suburbia and has them in her yard on a regular basis.

The GC line for years was Grouse were dying out because of lack of habitat...While the dedicated Grouse hunters were telling them they know of perfect covers that hold few or no Birds. And for years it fell on the deaf ears. Then finally they sent some out to actually look at the covers. Guess what? "Yes, there should be Birds here." So finally they decided to look into it. Their current answer is West Nile. Well their methodology of coming to that conclusion is suspect, but they are sticking to it.

Small game Bird hunters here? With the exception of Pa stocked, they are a dying breed. It is rare to cross paths with one other than when hunting stocked. Another dirty secret is most Bird hunters are not all that willing to hunt hard for Grouse....They hit the stocked fields for an hour or so...and if not successful go home to watch the games. Can't miss the Steeler game for hunting.

If you don't have Birds to hunt and want to shoot shotguns...where do you go? Clays? And I see it almost on a weekly basis...Sporting Clays is the game. One course close by this year has scheduled over 100 corporate or charity events. Events that most time have 100 plus shooters. And the manager said if not for Covid, it would have been more. You can hardly call them anymore to just go and shoot. The facility often is booked for 2 events a day. And it is surprising the number of women showing up and finding more than a little fun shooting shotguns. Back to the subject, ehh!!!

Women are bringing other women out to shoot sporting clays, and they don't necessarily need or want the men around telling them..."This is how you should do it honey."

Watched that happen...over and over... to one girl. During a break, I sat down beside her and said...."I bet that gets old." I can't right now remember her reply, but I was laughing out loud it was so good....and from a really attractive girl...colorful. Something like....Oh yea, I'm f......trying to miss, just so I can have you talking into my ear, while I'm trying to hit something." That wasn't exactly it, but it was outstanding...


In addition, many of them eventually start looking at the good stuff. And I know a couple that have got into Bird hunting and Dogs. And some can play....

Perhaps clays may help in bringing us back around?????

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.

Horse...

It is obvious you know the game...With regards clays, especially sporting clays, most often it is a different game. However, most refer to it as being similar to trap and skeet....Well the differences are considerable with regards variety, distances and report and true pairs. And back when the game started it was all manual traps and the trapper had to be close to hear the call. Today with automatic trips and electronic release, the trap can be almost any place....It isn' t the same game that Brister and the Remington boys....yes, Remington should be given much of the credit....brought to America.

That being said, here we are often told the importance of getting off the bench and to practice our rifle shooting from field positions. Yet many don't think the same applies to shooting shotguns for Birds....There are basics that apply to becoming proficient with rifles and hunting...and the same applies to shotguns and Birds...Unless one has access to large numbers of live Birds....clays are the place to develop the basics of shotguns and Bird hunting.

Addition: And Gnohaa's country was essentially the birthplace of sporting clays in America..The Eastern Shore was the first to promote sporting to any degree.....Hopkins, J&P, Schraders..

The Great American, The Blue Crab...500 and 600 shooters crossing the bay bridge to shoot a new game...

Have spent some time in the eastern U.S. hunting various states, and one of the factors that has to have affected wild gamebird populations is the abundance of whitetails in many areas. One of my good friends, a custom gunsmith, has been part owner of 800 acres in West Virginia for many years. There's some fairly level ground along a creek, but most is pretty up and down, like a lot of West By God, with plenty of timber.

Back when he and his friends first bought the place as a hunting-fishing family get away, he says the ruffed grouse hunting was pretty darn good. The timber is still here, but most of the ground cover gets eaten by deer--and they hunt the deer pretty hard. I have seen plenty of deer on the place, in fact it's hard not to, but cannot remember seeing a ruffed grouse in all of my visits.

No argument from me that practice is essential. I haven't been on an organized skeet/sporting clays team/league in about 3 yrs and my shooting shows it in the form of more cripples. I can band-aide it somewhat by swapping to a 12Ga rather than my preferred 20, but, it's still a band-aide, I'd benefit more from more off-season targets. Clays cannot however prepare you for what your reaction might be to flushing game birds, only flushing game birds can prepare you for flushing game birds.

I was exceptionally fortunate to have grown up in ND during the best of the CRP years. We had an "open campus" during high school and reasonable pheasant hunting was only 10Min away. String together 2 off-periods and one could get in 90min of bird hunting without ditching class. Doggone huns were EVERYWHERE when I was growing up, enough so that I learned to pick out 1-bird rather than "flock-shoot" before I exited Jr. High, a concept I've seen an awful lot of adults never ever catch on to. 10's of thousands of bird-flushes later, I don't have to rush, and I rarely down more than 1 bird at a time, as losing downed birds really irritates me.

Like so many things I think it's a complex combination of factors. After being born in Pittsburg my Dad was transferred to Chicago so I grew up in the south suburbs.

Back then it was a mix of small corn/bean fields, homes that sprung out of fields and of course the Cook County forest preserve which was almost all sapling forests or wild grass. We had pheasants everywhere to the point my friends and I would crawl along the edge of the fields and shoot them in the heads with air rifles. These were later cooked over an open fire near our treehouse. There was no actual hunting allowed in Cook County so this got us in some trouble then that was dealt with quietly by police and parents and now would like get us put in jail.

Anyway this was the early 70's and was typical of all over the midwest. Stop and look at a plowed field and you'd give up counting pheasants. My Dad and I would take an annual trip to Iowa and Nebraska and same thing for quail out there. Then it all started to crash. Really bad consecutive winters in 77/78, edge to edge farming practices increased airborne and surface predators all take their toll. In 1980 my Dad was transferred to central IN and I think we got the last of some decent grouse in Brown, Morgan and Monroe counties. By that point, even in the glaciated counties north of the hills there were very few pheasants. That had largely disappeared in less than 10 years.

I was up in NH a couple weeks ago and had a guide for a trout trip. He was saying grouse hunting in NH is in decline but VT and ME remain strong due to small woodlot cutting and regrowth in those states and less so in NH. I hope to prove him wrong soon

On the topic of live vs clay. In my experience you won't find many good clays shooters that approach the category of "poor" for actual hunting but the opposite isn't true.

Agree completely...and I'm guilty of the sin. Partially developed from hunting Ruffed Grouse for so many years. You hear the flush, look for the Bird and most times best get a shot off before they are gone..Not always..but most times. Now that I don't hear as well....fortunately or unfortunately....depending on the player...they are much more likely to escape.

Pugs...

One fellow I know went to Maine last year...Over 100 flushes in three days.

Pheasants???? DuxDog here has a place in S.D. to stay and he feeds you well...it would be worth looking into if you want to hunt public land on your own and have a Dog....A friend of his has helped us out on finding spots..Seeing 100 to 200 Birds a day isn't uncommon. They can be on the wild side....but they screw up often enough...Hell, one even flew into a telephone line and killed itself....

And it wouldn't be rare to find a few nice shotguns hanging around also...

Just accepting my vest will have ME, NH and VT fishing and hunting licenses in it when we get up there.

We're hunting 22-24 Oct with an outfit out of Wagner SD (IIRC) - Hatari has it set up. Flying in and out of Sioux Falls on the aluminum tube. We don't have a dog right now, another situation to be rectified in retirement. I hesitate to put the breed and line I'm interested in on here to avoid starting a religious war I'll do it gun dogs as I get serious about the search.

Unless the right Spanish falls into my lap I'l take the Beretta 682 Sporting I've had since 1990

Your Parker Repro 16 would work well aso...

For conversation....

Nice - My 16 is skeet and skeet and I'm a little concerned about 16 gauge availability this year out there but George DeVries has offered to hook me up so TBD.

MD: My guess is the forest matured. Grouse thrive in aspen 8-13 years best with mark decline at 18 years. 20,000 stems per hectare is a good density.

Skeet and Skeet wouldn't be my first choice...George is a great guy who has more than a little experience with S.D. Pheasants....

RST is another resource...however right now the Covid supply chain interruptions has limited their offerings. Have some orders in with them...however not sure of what their availability will be come fall. If you want to try them, I would advise getting on the waiting list.

May have to start pulling the handle on my 16 Gauge reloader...Primers are the only problem right now, however friends has enough to share.

Early stage prime Deer and Ruffed Grouse habitat have much in common...As it matures the Deer can hang on, but the Grouse will dwindle.

There has been a good bit of clear cutting going on in the Pa ANF...5000 acres per year for a while...And the Marsellis gas boom made a lot of edge cover...the Deer started to come back in those areas...but the Grouse didn't even come close to historic numbers. And the Grouse can find a meal up higher than the Deer. In good cover there is more than enough food for both. Something else is getting the Grouse...Either that or their numbers went down below those required for abundant repopulation.

bobmn,

Yes, I'm very aware of the relationship between ruffed grouse and aspen. But this piece of land has been regularly clear-cut in various portions over decades, which tends to encourage new aspen growth. They bought the land long before the first time I visited it, around 30 years ago.

One of the members is also a professional wildlife biologist with the WV game department, and we have discussed this, more than once. (The membership also includes an actual rocket scientist, who worked for Hercules for years before retiring. It's an interesting group.)

Years ago, my brother and I spoke with a land manager on one of the gamelands. He said a huge factor was the early cutting of hay, farmers trying to squeeze another crop out. Not only does it remove the cover, but he said the hens stay on the nests and get harvested along with the hay. In the area we hunted, poultry farmers bought up family farms and cleared all the cover to maximize the grain production. My grandparents place, once a mix of cedars, weeds, old apple trees, and a pond, ended up looking like the surface of Venus. No cover, no food, no birds.

Well, I can't speak for ruffs, but, for any prairie-dwelling upland game birds, this summer/fall is going to be a trying time.

Right now, anything taller than a sewing needle is falling to the sicle-bar to make "hay". Grass, CRP, and dried up cattails. Get a little deeper into fall without some rain, the remaining cattails in the Dakotas are going to resemble the oil fires in Kuwait as the Iraqis pulled out of the 1st gulf war. If we get any real winter, given the lack of remaining habitat, the prairie is going to be a fookin' wasteland.

Horse1 said it well. Along with drought that is severe, we got hit with quarter size hail and wind June 10. As the rancher who leases the place put it, a jackrabbit would have to pack a lunch to cross our east pasture. Think it will be a bad bird year. Hoping the coyotes are hungry though.....might try a little coyote hunting as soon as we get a little moisture, if we do. I won't fire a gun recreationally out there this summer; it's just too dry..