Hunted N. Prior yesterday afternoon. Gentlemen was asking where we hunted, wanted to give us our cripple. Class act. Unfortunately it was not our bird, but the guys in front of us. Well done.
guys in 56 followed their cripple to my zone and took couple of shots at the duck right at me. BBs bounds off the water and hit all around me. Thanks god they did not hit me in the eye. He said he did not see my decoys. Both 55 and 56 were hunting Shiawassee style on the wrong side of the corn. Whenever 55 shot, I got sprayed. Seems like zones are close if you hunt same side. They were skybusters too, his 56 cripple ended up 2 zones over to 60. Shut the F up craig. Here is where guys were setup.
Oh boy dead ducks and put up with all that **** no thanks.Now if all the hunters there were like you and some of the others those places would be a lot better but that will never happen.
i'll say this. when you are 100+ yards away from a zone, and you see them shoot at a duck, most people will think its skybusting. even if its a 30 yard shot. its depth perception...i can remember when i first started hunting and always thought guys were skybusting....but they killed every duck they shot at. One day i was bitching about another zone and my dad corrected me and said i was wrong...those birds were 30yrds, i swore they were 50+...over time i noticed my dad was right. specially when i watched a good hunter that i know...do it repeatedly and knocked them dead every shot. This is not something you learn (someone elses range) hunting 3 days a year somewhere. Yes i do see skybusting and recognize it...but i don't see it as often as talked about and i bet i got more days on the flats than anyone in here. had it happen 1 time last season...none this season. I'm watching a thread on sfcha facebook right now where a guy is complaining about the field backside hunting and shooting his decoying birds....but they have killed every duck they shot at....and is dropping them in in their own decoys. then i see tons of comments on it where guys are bitching about state land, public hunting, always ******, skybusting blah blah blah. 9 outa 10 times its someone watching someone else killing birds and they get pissy about it. I know i'll get **** about this comment but its honest truth...i've seen this EVERY season for 40+ years. lol. now if the guy wiffs thru a box of shells, its usually skybusting and he shoulda switched to waiting longer and closer birds because what hes doing isnt' working. honestly, most of them commenting don't even hunt there. so maybe they had a bad experience, maybe they didn't...but again, i hunt there 4-5 days a week and rarely see a pissing match like i'm seeing in this thread. p.s. this year is tough because shiawassee had a tough year and our only good fields are our smallest gapped fields (prior rd.)....and of course most people are flocking to them fields.
if you go out with 25 shells, come home with no shells and 3 ducks....you need to re-evaluate your shooting/distances. yesterday zone 62 shot 2 boxes of shells...4 ducks. there was hardly any wind. this tells me they took bad shots. its one thing to miss/shoot bad...but they shoulda recognized they were shooting too long or missing badly and waited for better shots. for gods sake....land them and waterslap them til you get your act together.
Yeppers....I agree. I went to a zone once where the ducks wanted our pot hole. We shot our limit and when we went in the guys over from us spoke about how good we were at sky busting. I said ???? Really those were like 30 yards...and again they were dead when they hit the water. Lots of Gadwall and mallards.
The other thing people forget about is that sound is slower than sight. The first shot they took at that bird was probably 10 yards lower than when you start hearing it. Also, most people have no idea how to judge vertical distance to start with. 30 yards is 90 feet; no one would hesitate to shoot at a duck 30 yards away, but would balk at shooting at a duck at the top of a 9-10 story building. In my experience, a lot of the 'skybusting' or few ducks per shells shot is due more to inexperienced hunters being bad shots. The adage of 10% of hunters killing 90% of ducks is 100% true. The biggest difference between successful and unsuccessful managed area hunters in my opinion is the ability to take advantage of the chances you're given.
Well kid I agree with most of what you wrote but I have been hunting the Bay for 50+ years 20 to 50 days each.I hunt 90% of the time 600 yards or more from any other hunters thats the way we hunt come and go as you please if I shoot a lot of birds or not its very relaxing to me don't worry about the guys being near me.
definitely can't argue with you on that. wanting isolation from other hunters....managed areas are not. lol.
You can’t get mad at your neighbors when they are killing birds stone dead. You should be upset when your neighbors are sailing cripples into the refuge or the buffer zones or even your own zone. If everyone let the birds work like Shi kid did in that video the experience for everyone becomes so much better.