Feature RJ
July 2010

will be the first to admit that I have been luckier than most. The line of work I have been in for the lastquarter-century has allowed me the chance to travel to places to hunt and shoot – not the same thing – that I would never have been able to get to if I’d have got an honest job at some point. The same can be said for almost all the folks who regularly write outdoor articles. They could probably make more money doing something – anything -- else, but they’ve chosen a way of life as much as a career, and I haven’t heard anyone voice regrets. The definition of a freelance outdoor writer is someone who has a talent for writing, a burning desire to share his knowledge, and is married to a pediatrician.

This time of year is when we start thinking about a lot of things, and since you’re reading this, it’s fair to assume that one of those things is the sport we love so much. No one’s shooting career lasts forever, of course, and since nobody ever laid on his deathbed wishing that he’d spent more time at work, I assume there are places that you’d like to get to if time and money were not the barriers most of us find them to be. I haven’t been everywhere, and there are some places I have no desire to go to – Africa, for example. The wingshooting there is supposed to be spectacular, but I have little urge to walk the same ground with things that bite, stomp, claw, toss, tromp, gore, poison, mutilate, and ingest humans on a disturbingly regular schedule. Shoot what can’t shoot back, that’s what I say. Plus it takes like 24 hours to get there.

But if according to the actuarial tables you have fewer opening days in the rearview mirror than in the headlights, my guess is you’ve thought about a place or two you’d like to go, the kind you may not discuss with your hunting buddy because he might think you’re going soft on him, you know, “What’s so fun about going to a swanky lodge with a guide and private land and all that when you can spend endless hours wandering through birdless fields with six-dozen other guys doing the same thing?”

Maybe that’s a little hard, and we always have fun and usually get birds and good dog work. But there is something nice about not having to work so hard, not having to worry about “your” spot having a truck parked in it, not having to worry that the birds have all been educated to the point of evaporation, not having to plan the strategy and the approach, but instead just going along for the ride.

f course, you’ll have to part with a little – okay, maybe a lot – of that which you work so hard for, but it may be surprising to find out you are closer to it than you think. The trick is to look at it in terms of not how much you spend, but how little more you have to spend.

Let’s take a nice place, say a pheasant operation is South Dakota. It’s leased land, wild birds; you and your partner and your dogs have it to yourselves. The price is steep -- $1595 each for three days, four nights, which means you get three full days in the field. That’s $530 a day, roughly. But let’s see what that includes: South Dakota License ($110+); lodging (you’d spend $40 - $50 a person per night on your own);food (figure $40 a day); (refreshing after-hunt beverages (that’s between you and your bartender); you’ll save on gas because you won’t be driving around, you’ll be driven around; and you don’t have to clean your own birds or pay to have them dressed and packaged and frozen for your trip home (another $40 or so if you shoot your nine roosters). Plus here’s something you may not think about. The average person who comes to that fine state to hunt pheasants on his own stays five days because the non-resident license is good for two, five-day hunts. But lodge owners tell me that very few of their three-day guests remain in the state to hunt after their stay. So if we’re on our own, we have a tendency to stay longer and, of course, spend more.

The estimates vary, but the best number I can get from the tourism people as of last year is that the typical non-resident South Dakota pheasant hunter spends about $1000, license included, during his visit. So, the logic says the lodge will cost you $595, not $1595. For that you get a guide (who you have to tip – add that in; but you aren’t slipping a landowner $50 a day to let you hunt on his land “with permission”), places to hunt undisturbed by others, and if your dog pulls up lame, he’s got a replacement ready to go. Plus someone cooks for you, cleans your birds, and some places even clean your gun if you want.

I know, it’s a stretch, but this logic has worked on A Close Relative By Marriage for years. And it isn’t like we’ll go every year. These are once-in-a-decade type of trips. The problem is, there are a lot of them and not all that many decades left in those headlights.

If you hunt in Texas and much of the South, you know that paid hunting is a fact of life, either day hunts or your share of a lease, which can run many thousands of dollars a year. For some of us lucky enough to live where there’s a lot of good hunting on public land, like the Upper Midwest and Lakes States, you don’t have to travel far and this may not interest you. But if you live in a state where there isn’t a lot of good hunting opportunities and you end up traveling a good bit anyway to hunt public land elsewhere, you’ve got a pretty good investment in your sport now and maybe you’re not getting much for it. A nice paid hunt every other year or so may be just what you need.
 
And, frankly, there are some hunts that we’ll probably never be able to experience unless we’re willing to pay: a Deep South plantation bobwhite hunt, for example.

ven if you disagree with me about Africa, there are some places you’d probably opt out of, like maybe driven pheasants or red grouse in the UK. Even if we want to go, shooting in the UK has started to gain again in popularity among the monied class much as it was in Edwardian days, and the best shoots are now booked years in advance. I know one fellow who shoots grouse with a line of friends every year in Scotland in August, and if they should miss a year, he says they’ll never be able to get on that moor again because of the waiting list behind them.

I do have some suggestions for you to consider and maybe start saving for. If you have not been to these, at some point in your career, you need to think about The Big Three.

Pheasant Lodge: I have mentioned it earlier, of course. There are good ones scattered all across the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and elsewhere. The best ones hunt wild birds on thousands of acres of land. Many of these places have leased land that some folks used to hunt by permission, and as a result, in some quarters they are not very popular. But just as farmers are growing corn for ethanol instead of keeping their land in CRP, farmers do what they must do to make a living from the land, and if leasing it to a lodge for $X an acre makes more sense to them than letting a friend hunt for a few days a year for free, it’s their option and we need to understand that.

These outfits range from the swankiest facilities and five-star meals, to a bunkhouse, cook your own food, and there’s the field -- and the prices vary accordingly. But they all have one thing in common: the lack of competition. You are paying for the exclusive right for you and your dog to tromp about to your heart’s content without worrying that a gang of fellows from Connecticut are cutting in on you.

Many pheasant lodges release birds, of course, but they’ll tell you if they do, and plus their season will be longer than the state season, and even some wild bird operations have ground devoted to preserve type hunting for their clients who are older, infirm, or not exactly members of the US Olympic skeet team.
 
And there are probably some, but I have not run across a place yet that won’t welcome your dog.

Southern Quail Plantation. About the only way we’ll get to experience good, Southern-style quail shooting is to go to a place that specializes in it, and be willing to pay for it. I don’t need to tell you that there are painfully few places open to the public that feature wild quail in the South, but the best places have the best-flying birds.  These and the pheasant destinations account for maybe half the pay-to-play operations in the country; there are probably more high-end quail places than there are high-end pheasant lodges.

An added benefit for Northern shooters is that the experience is best when things cool down in the South, which is early winter in the North, by which time the seasons are closed, so you’re not sacrificing hunting time around home to take the trip. And if it gets very cool where you’re headed, your dog is unlikely to encounter any snakes. I said, “unlikely.”

South America. Being dog folks, we are probably tempted to cross Argentina and Uruguay off our list. And in light of the expense, which is not inconsequential, you’d be justified. But before you dismiss our sister continent out of hand, let me make the case for the other half of your brain – the wingshooter half.

First, being south of the equator, the seasons are reversed from ours in the northern hemisphere – June and July are mid-winter there -- so it isn’t like you’d be hunting your dog anyway, and it’s an unusual pleasure to look forward to your first hunting trip in May or June. I have been twice, both times to visit several lodges to do TV shows, which are not as simple to make as you’d think and take a lot of the sizzle out of a hunting experience (yeah, I hear you – poor Smitty), but one thing those trips showed me that I could not have learned had I gone on my own is that the best bet is to pick out a lodge that has a variety of wingshooting available, not just one, doves or ducks, for example.

Granted, these places are few compared with the specialty spots, most of which are for doves. But I can assure you, unless you’ve got a longing for some intracranial bleeding, a couple days of banging away at doves will be all the fix you’ll need, especially if you come from a state where shooting at mourning doves isn’t exactly a novelty. Plus, you get charged for shotshells, and if you get carried away, you may have to max your credit card when it comes time to pay the bill. The places that offer several types of shooting do not usually have any type as good as the specialty spots, but in South America, the definition of “good” is pretty much up for grabs.

Ducks are another matter, especially if you are a duck hunter back up north. The variety and the sheer numbers are staggering; you’ll think you are back in the days of the market hunter. Contrary to popular belief, there is a limit and a season on ducks (not doves, and no closed season on doves, but their winter is the best time to go). You may be repulsed by the big duck bags you may have heard of. Many of those stories get better with the re-telling. Suffice it to say that there are more ducks killed in the Mississippi Flyway in two weekends in the US than are killed in all of Argentina in the entire season.

And then there are pigeons, big pigeons, they’re a barn pigeon and a half, and they fly like the wind. They are among the toughest second shots in the world if you miss the first. I have missed spot-wing pigeons by eight feet.

Finally the perdiz, which looks like a little rhea because that’s what it is. It lies for a dog and you hunt it in the wide open – I could hit a pitching wedge out of their typical cover. If your arthritic knees have kept you out of the woodcock covers but you still have the urge to following a dog for wild birds, perdiz are hard to beat.

A few lodges offer two, three, and even all four types of shooting.  But you’ll have to search for them, or line up several close together and hunt each for a couple days. That makes the cost of transportation to and from the continent a little more worthwhile. And they love visiting Americans down there.

The wingshooter half I mentioned? You are likely to get more shooting in five or six days in South America than you will get in a decade back home, maybe more. If that sort of thing appeals to you, think about it.
A word about South America, though. Once you go, you’ll want to go back, so consider that carefully.

I’m not suggesting that you sell a kidney to finance one of these excursions, and you may well decide or have decided that such places are not for you. But every wingshooter owes it to himself – and in some cases, his dog – to think about it.
           

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