cimmaronkid
04-12-2007, 09:33 PM
This is absolutely the worst hunt I have ever been involved in! Every year in the north east corner of Oklahoma the wildlife department has a prairie chicken hunt and it supposedly requires drawing out to be able to hunt. Last year, my old college room mate and I applied together and got drawn for what we figured would be a fun relaxing shoot.
For those of you not familiar with a prairie chicken, they are about the size of a large pigeon with more feathers. When the feathers are removed, their body is only about the size of a large quail. Lots of protection from birdshot! Their wings are rather long, flat, and wide and so is their “rudder and elevators” and when they fly, they will get up a head of steam, set their wings, and glide, sometimes for a mile or so before they land. As they glide, they will “waggle” from side to side and remind me of a flight of B-17’s that are always in the old war movies. Sounds like an easy enough target.
The hunt is held on a plot of 80 acres of maze that the state plants every year to feed these birds, and the object is to shoot them as they glide into the maze field. The shot should be like a high house 7 on a skeet field. A real “gimmie” shot. Show up early, select a place to shoot from and wait for the sun to come up and the birds to glide in. Again, a nice easy shoot.
We show up about an hour before sunrise, show the game wardens the paperwork and licenses and are instructed to go select a place to shoot from and to enjoy ourselves. We carried in our folding stools, thermos bottles, shotguns (O/U’s choked F/XF for both guns) and some of my Winchester International Pigeon shells that are nickel plated 6’s that say 1 ¼ oz. and 3 ¼ dram. They hit hard! As we sat their waiting for the night to disappear, we talked about our families, old girlfriends, etc. Life was good, or so we thought.
As it became lighter, we could see that approximately every 10 yds their was another hunter , some with several buddies, and some in varying degrees of sobriety. Behind us was the same, but with little kids beginning to move and squirm and run around. We were in deep doo-doo. With the first morning light came the birds gliding in to the field to feed, their wings set, rocking from side to side. Easy targets. It is at this point that things went south rapidly.
When the birds were about 100 yds out, some kid runs to the front of the field and screams at the top of his lungs, “Her they come!” and everyone without a brain opens up at these birds as we sit there in amazement. We knew we should run and flee, but the urge to stay and just see how big of morons these people were got the better of us and we stayed. Ammunition was being fired at these poor birds like flak guns in Berlin at the bombers in daylight bombing raids. The second wave of birds started to come in, but this time higher than the first as more ammunition was expended. When a bird was hit it wouldn’t fold like a quail or pheasant, but instead drop its wing like an old prop fighter that had been blasted out of the sky and spiral to earth. Kids were running everywhere snagging birds that were hit by other hunters and taking them back to their parents. Words were being exchanged. Things were turning nasty. One flew directly overhead and I hit him with the XF barrel and feathers went every where. The bird dipped and started to fall just as some kid heads after him to say that his father killed the bird. His dad was recovering from a hang over and couldn’t hit a bulls’ ass! The next flight came in even higher, probably 60+ yds high, but this still didn’t stop these people from firing 100 yds out. And about 2 hrs of total mayhem later, it was over. Thank God! We were still alive!
The only people that came out on this deal were the ammunition companies. Our score was 7 shots fired, 5 birds recovered. Enough for a good dinner at my old roommate’s parent’s house. We stopped and got a bottle of wine, and went to his parent’s house and dressed the birds and told old war stories of our college days until dinner. And as his parents pointed out, no matter how much trouble we had, any time together was a “good day.” We both had to agree.
For those of you not familiar with a prairie chicken, they are about the size of a large pigeon with more feathers. When the feathers are removed, their body is only about the size of a large quail. Lots of protection from birdshot! Their wings are rather long, flat, and wide and so is their “rudder and elevators” and when they fly, they will get up a head of steam, set their wings, and glide, sometimes for a mile or so before they land. As they glide, they will “waggle” from side to side and remind me of a flight of B-17’s that are always in the old war movies. Sounds like an easy enough target.
The hunt is held on a plot of 80 acres of maze that the state plants every year to feed these birds, and the object is to shoot them as they glide into the maze field. The shot should be like a high house 7 on a skeet field. A real “gimmie” shot. Show up early, select a place to shoot from and wait for the sun to come up and the birds to glide in. Again, a nice easy shoot.
We show up about an hour before sunrise, show the game wardens the paperwork and licenses and are instructed to go select a place to shoot from and to enjoy ourselves. We carried in our folding stools, thermos bottles, shotguns (O/U’s choked F/XF for both guns) and some of my Winchester International Pigeon shells that are nickel plated 6’s that say 1 ¼ oz. and 3 ¼ dram. They hit hard! As we sat their waiting for the night to disappear, we talked about our families, old girlfriends, etc. Life was good, or so we thought.
As it became lighter, we could see that approximately every 10 yds their was another hunter , some with several buddies, and some in varying degrees of sobriety. Behind us was the same, but with little kids beginning to move and squirm and run around. We were in deep doo-doo. With the first morning light came the birds gliding in to the field to feed, their wings set, rocking from side to side. Easy targets. It is at this point that things went south rapidly.
When the birds were about 100 yds out, some kid runs to the front of the field and screams at the top of his lungs, “Her they come!” and everyone without a brain opens up at these birds as we sit there in amazement. We knew we should run and flee, but the urge to stay and just see how big of morons these people were got the better of us and we stayed. Ammunition was being fired at these poor birds like flak guns in Berlin at the bombers in daylight bombing raids. The second wave of birds started to come in, but this time higher than the first as more ammunition was expended. When a bird was hit it wouldn’t fold like a quail or pheasant, but instead drop its wing like an old prop fighter that had been blasted out of the sky and spiral to earth. Kids were running everywhere snagging birds that were hit by other hunters and taking them back to their parents. Words were being exchanged. Things were turning nasty. One flew directly overhead and I hit him with the XF barrel and feathers went every where. The bird dipped and started to fall just as some kid heads after him to say that his father killed the bird. His dad was recovering from a hang over and couldn’t hit a bulls’ ass! The next flight came in even higher, probably 60+ yds high, but this still didn’t stop these people from firing 100 yds out. And about 2 hrs of total mayhem later, it was over. Thank God! We were still alive!
The only people that came out on this deal were the ammunition companies. Our score was 7 shots fired, 5 birds recovered. Enough for a good dinner at my old roommate’s parent’s house. We stopped and got a bottle of wine, and went to his parent’s house and dressed the birds and told old war stories of our college days until dinner. And as his parents pointed out, no matter how much trouble we had, any time together was a “good day.” We both had to agree.