Upland Hunting

Among the many joys of hunting upland birds is the chance, necessity really, to seek out new covers.

Far too few gunners spend appropriate amounts of time practice shooting their shotgun mimicking actual hunting conditions. Don't think that wingshooting is much like riding a bicycle: once you learn it always comes back. The appropriate phrase is more like: "Use it or lose it." Following are five tips to help keep your wingshooting skills honed.

1. Point, Don't Aim

Every bird hunter dreams of the perfect day afield with crisp, cool fall mornings and antsy dogs anxious to wind that first bird of the new season. Picture perfect points, flushes, shots and retrieves to hand cloud our minds. However, every seasoned bird hunter experienced the desperate disappointment of losing a downed bird even though every aspect of the hunt had been flawless to that point.

Autumn is that all too short season between late summer and fall. Dear to the hearts of shotgunners, autumn is a magical time in the field. It is a time of harvest for farmers and hunters alike. Slightly cooler mornings create an excitement among those who pursue the birds of autumn – those first flights of blue-winged teal, stirred to migration by northern breezes and those gray ghosts of the fields, the morning dove.