Posted by Rob Merkel on November 5, 2007, 11:13 pm
Last weekend I went upland hunting with two friends of mine who are brothers. These characters heard about a wildlife area that was lightly hunted and had multiple species on it. The land covered thousands of acres of broken terrain dotted with potholes, thick native brush and columnar basalt. There were little islands of aspens and ponderosa scattered about with seeps in them. We ran into pheasants, huns, quail, ducks, sharptails, ruffed grouse, and turkeys!!! Aside from the quail, it was a lot of hiking between birds, but when we found them the shooting was superb.
I was fortunate enough to inherit two 20gauge elsies last winter. One is a 1907 field, and the other a 1909 2E. They are both lovely to shoot, particularly the 2E as it has 26" barrels, weighs just under 5-1/2 pounds and is bored skeet/full. The weather was a little dry and the scenting for the dogs was tough, but we managed to bring home limits of quail and multiple roosters.
The first day out I was very handy on the quail with my field grade and quickly limited to my surprise. Later that day we got into the huns and I couldn't adapt to the birds, missing seemingly easy shots repeatedly. Strangely enough even though we covered much of the same ground both days, we saw very few pheasants the first day. The second day our pheasant luck turned with many birds rising out of thick cover flushed by our labs. The birds were all wild stock and were large and strong. I shot my 2E the second day and the pleasure I had in carrying and shooting it are beyond words. It pointed like a dream and I was shooting very well with it, getting many doubles on the quail that day.
We sat around a campfire listening to the coyotes howl with a flock of snow geese flying around in the dark above us while we sipped brandy and ate rib-eyes off the coals. I felt like a king. Rob.