Today's challenge.

[Britsmoothy]

Indeed. But they don't explain the weird "overnight" disappearance of the birds here.
THAT is a big fox!

Depending on terrain and habitat the birds may not go up or have anywhere to roost. Then they are easy prey for all manner of night time predation.

 

[Hatman/2nd line]

Was to be a pheasant or two with a muzzloader.
A challenge in its own right but it had been ages since I last used my .45 smoothbore.

Weirdly I used #5 shot today also. I normally don't go larger than #6 and favour #7.

I tipped about 50gn of 4f powder, a thin card, two more thin cards with a scoop of vasaline, rammed them down and tipped 3/4oz of shot filled by another card and set off for a cock pheasant. I left the hens alone today.
Actually the first shot was a squirrel but the second shot was a rising pheasant that came down stone dead but landed in a flash of water .
View attachment 269982
Then it went downhill.
I missed the next three! And a partridge .
Finally I got one more chance and with a frantic retrieve we got my second bird.View attachment 269983

I had a good old time this morning and the pigeons, wow, a thousand birds easily.View attachment 269984

If I had to choose just one muzzloader I'd really struggle to not choose this little .45" smoothbore.

Thank you , you made me relive days past, here in PA we used to have great pheasant hunting but no more, sadly!

 

[Hatman/2nd line]

Indeed. But they don't explain the weird "overnight" disappearance of the birds here.
THAT is a big fox!

The word back then was "acid rain" damaging the eggs. I think it was something else that may have been in the ground for the farmers harvest.

 

[Britsmoothy]

All breaded up.