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I stood stock still, staring at the wall of ammunition behind the counter. Glancing over the multi-colored labels of flying pheasants, committed ducks, and scampering rabbits, my eyes glazed over. What did all of those numbers on the front of the boxes mean? I knew my shotgun was a 12-gauge, but beyond that I had no idea what I was doing. I was kicking myself for not asking more about the shells my mentor had handed me over the weekend. After several long moments of silence, without an attendant in sight, I lost my nerve and left empty-handed. It was a pretty rough day in my newly-fledged hunting career.

Humbled, I reached out for guidance. That evening we dissected a shotgun shell from packaging label clear to the wad. Holding the pellets in my hand and seeing the gunpowder made it all click. The next time I was at the gun counter, still a bit awkward, at least I knew which box of shells I wanted.

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Sometimes, hunting tidal creek marshes becomes more about fighting the terrain than it does shooting ducks. My earliest memory of losing a fight to the marsh came when I was only ten years old. I nearly drowned in a bottomless tidal pool, and if it hadn’t been for my dad plucking by my coat hood, it would’ve been my last hunt ever. Then, there was that time in high school when the current swept away my favorite pair of mallard decoys. They became the first of nearly a dozen lost to the tides. Then, a few years later, I suffered my most humiliating loss.

I will never forget it; I dropped a drake mallard, belly up, on a slick, wide mudflat right along the river bank. Sparing no time to think, I trudged out there to retrieve it and sunk in pluff mud up to my chest. In no time, I was unable to move, and the tide was coming up quick. My buddy had to toss me the bowline of his boat in a desperate rescue attempt. He revved his engine so hard that the water churned into cloudy chocolate milk. I held on for dear life as my legs and boots popped free. As I slid on my belly across the mud like a salt marsh penguin, I promised I’d never make that mistake again. 

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The art of choosing a bird dog is the subject of countless words—printed and spoken—including good-natured banter among friends. We bird dog owners dissect the subject with surgical precision, all based on the premise that there is one true answer: the perfect dog. For most of us, the path to our next (or first) bird dog is a journey taken with great care and caution and fraught with anxiety. After all, owning a hunting dog is a big commitment, and nobody wants to get it wrong.

If modern bird hunters all had the same requirements and preferences for their dogs, we’d have a single bird dog breed. The Common Bird Dog would range at the preferred distance, move at the preferred speed, handle birds by pointing or flushing in the preferred manner, and would, of course, have the preferred coat, color, size, and personality. The sheer number of different bird dog breeds, however, points to the reality of human opinion.

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A good duck hunter speaks hail calls fluently, levels a shotgun in pouring rain, stays warm in pelting sleet, and stands firm in hurricane-force winds. These qualities go far for bagging a limit of ducks. Great duck hunters, however, fight half the battle from the comfort of their couch. 

Great duck hunters approach the hunt like a college football coach approaches a National Championship game; they have a playbook and study it cover to cover. They know how to respond to the weather, have backup plans, and are prepared to handle anything the birds throw at them. Instead of hoping for victory, great duck hunters plan for it. 

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Sharp-tailed grouse, often known as sharpies, sharptails, or sharp-tails, are iconic birds of North America’s prairie landscape. Their spring mating ritual takes place on breeding sites called leks. At these sites, sharpies put on an amazing display of calling and dancing called booming. Those same general areas are where broods are raised, and early fall activities occur. 

Their survival requires large tracts of unfragmented, treeless landscapes. This is a trait carried into modern times; these birds evolved in what once was millions of acres of ideal grassland habitat that existed before European settlement. Hunting sharp-tails can take hunters to some of the most beautiful landscapes on the continent. Here is a guide to help you get started on a new adventure.

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Just like with other forms of hunting, there are enthusiasts that prefer different methods of take for their game of choice. Squirrel hunters tend to fall into two distinct groups along a strong dividing line: those who use shotguns and those who use rifles. Within these camps you can break them down further into people who like the various gauges, calibers and the like. Particularly for rifles, there are hunters that pride themselves on skill with open (iron) sights and those that enjoy the technical side of scopes.

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Pheasants bring out every emotion for most upland enthusiasts, including awe, joy, and frustration. Add in the difficulty of hunting these regal birds on public lands where roosters can be more intelligent than an MIT grad, and your emotions might include astonishment and downright rage. 

Hunters spend thousands of hours chasing pheasants across public lands each year. State-owned wildlife areas, federally owned national grasslands and wetlands, and state-leased private lands in walk-in hunting programs provide hunters with an incredible amount of real estate to pursue the Midwest’s most prized game bird. If you plan on hunting public land pheasants this year and want to keep your frustration down to a minimum, try hunting good pheasant cover, using hunter pressure to your advantage, taking notes, and being stealthy.

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My earliest memory of hunting features a cool fall breeze skating across a remote forest lake. The wind swirled in the canopy, and yellow oak leaves drifted in the wind like a thousand deflated balloons. One landed at my feet as I paddled in a beat-up fiberglass canoe with my dad. He let me skip school that morning, and I remember the paddling keeping me awake. The stars glimmered, and the silhouettes of Atlantic white cedars reached up to them like giant black mountains. A great horned owl echoed from some distant perch, and a beaver slapped its tail against the water right off the bow of our canoe. The noise broke the forest’s serenity, sending my body and our boat into a full-blown reactive jolt. 

By sunrise, I figured out what that whole morning was all about. Whistling wings ripped through the trees, and primordial squeals rang across the water. This trip was no predawn nature tour. The birds flew high against the pink morning sky, and a few broke off over our decoys. As I could make out their brilliant shades of green, blue, white, and chestnut, my dad rang off a few shots. 

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My Wirehaired Pointing Griffon worked the cover 50 yards ahead of me, his bell sounding gently in the warm, opening day of the ruffed grouse season in New Hampshire. We had hiked a mile and a half to get to a section of early successional growth that we had mapped out months before this moment of enjoyment squeezed between meetings on a busy Thursday schedule. 

My peaceful wait for the silence of his bell was shattered by the sudden eruption of yelping. I sprinted forward through the thick grouse habitat to get to him, my first thought being that he may be caught in a trap, and he could hurt his leg trying to get free. To my greater frustration, my path was intercepted, face to face, by a porcupine.

I would love to say this was the first encounter with those needle pigs but I should have added my dog's nickname is “porcospino.” It may be a curse of “versatile” gun dogs, but in his defense, he is usually steady on porcupines. Despite how prepared I felt myself to be for pulling those quills one by one from my dog's face and mouth, this day rocked my worldview.  

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Humans and dogs have been hunting together in some capacity for thousands of years. What presumably began as tentative cooperation between the two species eventually led to the development of specialized dog breeds intended to perform specific tasks to benefit the human hunter. Today, hunting dogs play an essential role in assisting hunters in the field and have also found a place in modern culture as beloved companions and competitive athletes.

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