Today's challenge.

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What a wonderful hunt, day and countryside you have there!!! Always loved your hunting threads like your geese and now your pheasants. We used to have them but disappeared in the early eighties this was in Maryland USA. Now live in Florida USA and we do have loads of doves bobwhite quail and snipes! Again Great hunt and love your poochi dog!
 
Good show Nathan.
What's with the "Vaseline" instead of your normally advocated animal or vegetable fat lube?
Lol, I was looking for something week's ago and noticed it buried deep in the junk draw so I grabbed it and threw it in my bag. When it's gone I'll use the tin for my lube, I may just add mine to it anyway even 👍🏻
 
Pheasants disappeared here in the mid 70's. The Game Commission rambles on about habitat loss and farming practices. I don't buy it. Those would erode the population over some period of time. But the birds here vanished virtually from one year to the next.
 
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.
Your success with the little 45 smoothy is definitely convincing me to get the barrel reamed on my 50 cal flintlock rifle
 
Pheasants disappeared here in the mid 70's. The Game Commission rambles on about habitat loss and farming practices. I don't buy it. Those would erode the population over some period of time. But the birds here vanished virtually from one year to the next.
They suffer from predation alot.
Buzzards take the young. Fox's take the sitting hens and so on.

I'm constantly hunting foxes to give them and other ground birds a chance.
IMG_20231006_210002.jpg
 
They suffer from predation alot.
Buzzards take the young. Fox's take the sitting hens and so on.

I'm constantly hunting foxes to give them and other ground birds a chance.
View attachment 270885
Indeed. But they don't explain the weird "overnight" disappearance of the birds here.
THAT is a big fox!
 
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