Mistakes made by Shotgun Hunters

Mistakes made by Shotgun Hunters

By Jason Smith

Goodness where to start… I cut my teeth on shotgun hunting when it came to hunting deer in my beautiful home state of Iowa. I joined my father’s first season hunting party when I was 14 years old, and I probably had around 15 years of shot-gunning under my belt before I ever picked up a bow or a muzzleloader. This coming shotgun season will my 30th. Wow! It kind of blows my mind to say that.

Hmm, I’ve made my fair share of mistakes, and I’ve seen or heard about plenty of others that make me realize that we’re all human.

In no particular order, here are a few mistakes that I think are noteworthy enough to write about.

Not Aiming
I know, it sounds like a no brainer, but it happens. Shotgun hunters can be completely out of practice when the season rolls around. They may not have touched a shotgun since they cleaned it and put it away following last season. I’ve met a few old timers who were crack-shots no matter what the situation. It was like muscle memory for them. For me, and I’m sure a few others, sometimes the shotgun is shouldered and fired easy enough, but the vital step of actually placing pins or crosshairs on the vitals is completely skipped in there somewhere. Slow down, breath, get on your target and squeeze the trigger. It’s that easy. Oh, and don’t look at the antlers.

A good technique I’ve used, since taught in my youth, is a few weeks out from shotgun season, I place deer pics on the walls around my office and practice aiming at their vitals with my ‘empty’ shotgun. It sounds kind of lame, but try it out leading up to the next season and see how much it changes how you aim in the field. I will admit that once I took up bow hunting, this pretty much quit being an issue for me, unless I get REALLY excited and turn all goofy. Bow hunting helps teach you how to truly aim every single time. One shot. One kill. Of course, the flip side of that is that I have passed on taking shots I could have easily made with my shotgun because I’ve bow hunted so much, and I end up kicking myself for it after the deer trots over the horizon.

Not Knowing the Terrain
Every year that my party has had a new member join, somebody got lost at least once throughout the season. Thank God for cell phones and good cellular coverage, because we never would have found a couple of them.

Studying aerial maps helps. Scouting helps too, but many shotgun hunters don’t have the luxury of free time to do much scouting before the season rolls around. It’s pretty much a learn-as-you-go experience. With that said, pay attention to your veteran party members. They’ve been there and done that, and I can honestly say that after 29 seasons of hunting some of the same timbers, I’m confident that I could be blindfolded and dropped in the middle of any one of them, and within a few seconds to a minute or so, I’d be able to tell you exactly where I was.
Knowing the terrain doesn’t just keep you from getting lost, it also helps you to hunt the ground more efficiently and effectively. Deer tend to take the same routes in and out of areas, year after year. Knowing where those points are, along with pinch points, and other significant structures/features, you’re going to increase the success rate of yourself and the rest of your party.

Not Being in Shape
I’m not saying you’ve got to be in Boston Marathon condition, but you owe it to your party to at least be in similar shape as the other party members, and you owe it to your family to not drop dead of a dang heart attack while traipsing through the woods.
I personally sit on my butt behind a computer screen at least 40 hours per week, so I’m speaking from experience. No Bueno… At my age, if I didn’t exercise on a regular basis, it wouldn’t take long for my legs and back to atrophy to the point that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy hunting the way I like to hunt when the season rolls around.

Go for walks on a regular basis. Blow the dust off that bike in the garage, air up the tires, and take it for a weekly or daily spin. Buy a gym membership and use it. Play fetch with your dog or wrestle with your kids or grandkids. Anything to get you moving. You’ll find that you can get in shape just as quickly as you got out of shape.

I’m a bit of a gym rat myself. I’ll probably lift free-weights in some capacity until the day I die or can’t move, or whatever, but that’s me. It’s what I enjoy. I ride my bike to the gym, bust out a good workout, and then ride my bike back home. I’ll admit I’m not breaking any weight lifting records, but I feel great after I get home and showered up, and I’m keeping in good enough shape to tackle just about anything that comes up, even at a moment’s notice. Plus, it’s a great stress reliever and the endorphins can elevate even the crummiest of moods.

Not Staying Put
When shotgun hunting in a party, it’s important to know where your other party hunters are. With that said, posters, or people who stay in one place toward the end of a drive, should really stay where they’re originally posted. There are a few reasons for this, but the ‘Safety-First’ reason is because the other party members pushing timber toward your location shouldn’t shoot in the general area of where you’re supposed to be. I say shouldn’t because there’s always that one wing-nut in the party that you just never know about. If you don’t know who it is, it’s probably you…

There’s also a reason you’ve been posted there in the first place. It’s because it’s probably a known spot of where deer funnel out, and maybe because the terrain helps to keep you out of harms way, or it gives you the best vantage point, etc. Whatever the case, it’s best to stay put and hunt the drive out. There’s nothing wrong with making adjustments to future pushing / posting strategies, as long as you set a plan and stick with it before you put the plan into action.

Not Taking Time to Enjoy the Comradery of Fellow Party Members
This used to be my shotgun party when I was a young guy. We would all eat breakfast on the drive in, meet up at zero dark thirty, get set, push it HARD from just before sunrise until noonish. Break for a quick random packed lunch in our cars, maybe try to dry our clothes out a bit and maybe nod off for a few minutes. Then back at it HARD again until just past sunset. For 5 days in December, we were more machine than we were human.

Sure, we harvested plenty of deer, but at what cost. We were all good and burned out when it was all over. Many of us would miss an extra day of work from being exhausted and needing to recover. They say wisdom comes with experience and age. That rings very true when it comes to deer hunting.

Today, two or three of us bring Casey’s donuts and sodas or something for others to share in the mornings as we congregate to jaw jack and go over the first drive of the day. Sometimes we won’t get set and going until well past sunrise, and nobody complains. We still push it pretty HARD, but when lunch time rolls around, we go to lunch as a group. It helps support the local economy, and gives us all a chance to catch up. Some of us haven’t seen or talked to each other since last season, so there’s plenty to catch up on. And let’s face it, bagged lunch doesn’t hold a candle to a heaping plate of steaming hot fresh mashed potatoes, roast beef, and sweet corn, all covered in beef gravy.

If it takes two hours to finish lunch, so what. We’re shotgun hunting because we enjoy it for what it is. All of it. The entire experience. It’s not just about the hunt or harvesting deer. Comradery is a BIG part of it. Slow down and enjoy the time together. You never know who might be hunting with you for their last season, this season.