I tried to get a picture of Blaze bringing back my bird but
she was too fast for me.... she dropped it and was giving us a
look that said "I brought it over here, what more do you
want me to do with that thing?"
She
is a funny dog with a lot of personality.
Anyway, the
true story of the hunt. Everybody always says "I like your
pictures, Sniper John" and let me tell you why he has the
best pictures. You go out and hunt, and about 10 minutes later
John has a limit and then he takes pictures while you try to
scratch your way to some sort of saving-face bag.
Yesterday
went like this: After our first slog and a half I wasn't sure we
were going to see birds. Then we flushed one. Or two. John
brought one down and the whole marsh came alive in front of us.
We pushed through the mud and within minutes, no exaggeration,
John had 4 in the bag. His first couple birds, I was like,
"cool!" and birds were flushing in front of me, too.
When he had 3 birds in 3 shots I was really pumped. I saw a few
of his birds fall, and kept thinking, man, I hope some birds
flush less than 50 yards of me one of these times. But I had
done this before and I knew that I would walk up on some tight
holding birds sooner or later, or we would walk a different
direction and I would have mostly short flushes and he would
have mostly long flushes.
Then it happened, a bird came
up only 15 yards in front of me. You have to realize these birds
fly like 678,243 miles an hour, and spook downwind. So a 15 yard
flush is like a 30+ yard shot before your gun even hits your
shoulder. But with such a short flush I was super confident.
Point, swing, bang, no kidding, the bird that was banking left
banked hard right the moment I was pulling the trigger.
John
was still 3 birds for 3 shots and I was up to no birds for 3
shots.
No taking away from John's shooting abilities, he
dropped some real long stuff too. And I got to see most all of
it. Pretty soon he was at 7 birds and we were joking that he
would take a limit and I would take nothing. I had screwed in a
modified choke at one point. We got to a corner and John took
#8, nice, short, puff of feathers, and down. I still had nothing
to show for the hunt except an alarmingly large pile of empty
hulls in my vest.
And then it happened. There were birds
flushing short. I was missing. My confidence started to sink.
The wisp flew overhead and John got those amazing pictures as I
emptied my gun on air. But I kept walking around zig zagging my
way through the mud. Birds started flushing in all directions.
My modified pattern was flying by birds, under, over, behind, in
front. Shells were coming out of my gun almost as fast as I
could put them back in.
I finally connected with a lone
bird.
John's last picture above is a limit of snipe with
a nice, light double. That's what a good snipe hunt looks
like.
My last picture of the day is also what a good
snipe hunt looks like, but, it's only one-eighth of a limit:
