First IFG Hunt... :)

[Grumpy]

"There's something that's been intriguing me for sometime. Is it an American thing to refer to a shoot as a hunt?"
Yes.

[Mack The Knife]

Ah! How typically Yank. They must do it their own way.

[mundaire]

Never shot a 20... how does it handle in the field?

Cheers!
Abhijeet

[TC]

Great pix.....Its a pity that the moose on the wall only bring back nostalgia and generate daydreams back in India....

Cheers gentlemen.

[TC]

Abhijeet. I am not at all a scattergun fella. But once shot a flying fox with a 20 against the setting sun. It was a Churchill, part of a pair, owned by a friend. Its smooth and recoil very negligible compared to a full load 12 gauge.

Oh ! we had the bat.... tastes like.... cant remember !!!

[Grumpy]

Imagine how I feel Dodger - the word `hunt` makes me feel very uncomfortable as a `hunt` is the collective term for a group of people on horseback with a pack of hounds. To `hunt` is do do so on horseback.
I try to remember to substitute the word hunt for shoot or stalk when posting here in order to save confusion. Likewise the word `gun` refers to a person engaged in a shoot as well as the thing he is shooting with. The `Guns` are those shooting at a shoot !

[Mack The Knife]

Grumpy,

The world needs more of us pedants.

Mack The Knife

[Grumpy]

Too right !
`Pedants R Us`

[HSharief]

Nice to see those smiles. Well done all!
- Thank you Rustum. We did have a lot of fun, my forearms still hurt from carrying the lightest gun in the pack.

There's something that's been intriguing me for sometime. Is it an American thing to refer to a shoot as a hunt?
- Well, this is the best we can do. I hope we can go for a real hunt sometime too. But till then, we'll have to kid ourselves with this. Well, atleast they had a GREAT chance to run/fly away from some really bad "shooters".

Amit, anyway to view your pics without them adding to my url address book?
- I think its an issue with your browser that saves the url address. You should be able to 'click thru' from Amit's post.

Mehul, shave that beard. You look like Rasputin!
- No comment. Maybe we can pass him off as Osama and claim the $25mil.

Are those release pens on the truck?
- The pens in the truck are "boxes" for the dogs. The release pens were really small for the pheasants, I feel ashamed for having to put them thru it. I hope they still taste good

Does that empty cartridge on a branch signify something?
- Mehul shot at a bird (he shot at every bird) and the empty flew out and got stuck at the end of that branch. Seemed interesting at the least.

[Mack The Knife]

Thanks, Sharief.

Did not quite understand this bit...."The release pens were really small for the pheasants, I feel ashamed for having to put them thru it. I hope they still taste good."

Mack The Knife

[mehulkamdar]

Mack The Knife,

Bearded men never tell barefaced lies.

I had to take shots at quite a few of the birds as there were guys letting off whole magazines at some. There were also occasions when there was a complete silence after perfectly co-ordinated swing throughs as certain members of the party had forgotten to turn the safeties off. While that devotion to safety did reassure me, it also reassured the birds a little, I guess.

Abhijeet,

Strangely, Inder seems to shoot the 20 better than the 12 probably because it seems to fit him better. He also shoots at live game better than at clay birds and at trap better than fixed targets. That is the charm of shotgunning, I guess, You never know what exactly would work for a shooter.

If you come here, of course, we would shoot several diffrent guns and have a good hunt organised.

Cheers!

Mehul

[mehulkamdar]

Grumpy,

There are certain uses of terms in the UK that I personally don't agree with - the use of the word "gun" to refer to shotguns primarily, a mistake that many in India make as well thanks to our inherited English.

With "hunt" equating to the French "chasse" for chase, I guess, etymologically there is a link to riding to hunt foxes with dogs but the term could also refer to riding to stick pigs with a lance or riding to shoot boar with a bow and arrows. In the end, it is just another delightful mash of historical contexts referred to by the same, short word. As a former student of English, I enjoy thinking about the way my favourite language evolved over the centuries.

Cheers!

[mehulkamdar]

Mack The Knife,

Being a plantation, the pheasants are bred in a remote portion of the property (this one was 500 acres in total) and before a hunt, they are either "planted" at various spots among the cornrows and in the woods before you try to find them with a dog and shoot them, or, if it is a stand shoot, then you have a tower from which 14 birds are released at a time with ten guns standing around the tower at different positions. Whoever has a bird fly in his direction gets to shoot at it. The release pens are pens in which the birds are transported from the breeding area to the actual hunting area before being released.

Sharief,

The release pens have to be small or if the birds had room, they would peck each other into a bloody mess in the drive from the pens to the fields. The birds are aggressive and have immense stamina as you saw, running so fast before they took off that at the end of the day everyone other than the dogs was tired.

As an aside, I had a long chat with Dan, our guide, about shotguns and found that he was a big fan of the A-5s among semi autos. He said that he had seen nothing but trouble guiding clients with the newer Browning Golds and Silvers. He also said that the first generation Benelli Extremas jammed badly on several occasions though the new Extrema IIs were very reliable. This from a man who shot more than 800 ducks this year, was a very interesting viewpoint! Dan, incidentally, hunts pheasants these days with a U/O .410 gauge just to show his shooting skills off.

Mack The Knife, there's a hint in there for you.

Cheers!

[Mack The Knife]

Mack The Knife, there's a hint in there for you.

Gosh, that was a subtle one!

Thanks for the clarification.

Mack The Knife

[kanwar76]

Honestly speaking I thought it will be very easy but when we got there and I saw the birds I felt kind of sorry but believe me it wasn't easy at all. Shooting live birds is way tougher than clay targets. For the first half I was shooting with only one shell in the gun. Only in second half I started to put one in chamber and two in mag. There was this one hen which flew over my head and I had to take first shot by arching my back and I missed it (obviously ) .I forgot that I had two more shots in mag and that hen got away...

Yep, Mehul that safety thing was hilarious . Everybody was standing waiting for guide to bring the dog and this hen flew over our heads everybody swung their guns but only Mehul fired . Me, Amit and Sharief forgot to turn our safety off

Abhijeet,

I don't know I am a weird shot I think. I sucked big time when I shot on still target with 12bore. I did better on clay target with 12 bore but sucked with 20. I didn't missed a single bird in first session but then I only got two chances..(yep sharief ) . My first shot was a long shot. I didn't even believe that I shot that coz Mehul and Sharief also shot at that bird as it flew in front of them and i was asking everybody who shot that..
but still i think I would have done better with a 12 bore...

but whatever it was a awesome day. A day which i will never forget in my life. Great time, great guns and biggest of them all great company. You people should see the video. I am sure you will have a belly laugh at some of the incidents....

-Inder