Month: September 2022

Huglu 20ga SxS – Review after two years of use

For years, the urge of owning a nice side by side shotgun in 20ga has floated around in my brain, briefly resurfacing from time to time, but never becoming overwhelming. Mostly because I didn’t hunt birds very often, and more importantly, because the price tag on most of these guns caused heartbeat irregularities and sudden surges in blood pressure every time I looked. Spending some time (days) in a hospital bed, waiting for a surgery spot to open, slightly delirious with hunger, I decided the time had come. And I knew which one I wanted: the CZ Bobwhite G2.

Contacting a local dealer, it quickly became clear that getting one ordered and imported from the US would come with very uncertain timelines. Months for sure, many months perhaps. But the dealer had an alternative. Apparently, the Turkish company Huglu makes the gun that CZ rebrands and sells as the Bobwhite model. And they had several Huglu shotguns in stock. Just not in the same finish, and not with the same barrel length, but cheaper and available immediately. So, a few days out of the hospital, we made the 5-hour road trip, one-way, to have a peek, and maybe bring one home.

First impressions

Honestly, I was not impressed by the looks of the gun, but my intention was to buy something that I would not be afraid to use. I wanted to drag this up mountains and ridges to look for blue grouse and ptarmigan, and put in the kayak when paddling for ducks, and drag through coulees and marshes, without having to worry about denting or scratching it. This one would probably fit that bill. The case colour hardening looked “thin”, and lacked the characteristics of a quality finish of that nature. It almost looked like a spray-on job, the colours vibrant, the pattern oddly regular. Hard to imagine this finish would last very long. The opening lever had a gold-coloured double-headed eagle, acceptable if stand alone, but rather boldly contrasting with the case colouring.

But the little gun fit! Eyes closed, shouldering, and finding the bead sitting right where it needs to be, was a pleasant surprise. Just shouldering the gun a couple of times had me sold, and forgiving it all the finish gaudiness. For a cost of just under a thousand Canadian dollars, it was not hard to justify this purchase. You wanted a gun over which you wouldn’t cry if you hurt it? Well, here it was.

After two years of use

The front trigger proved a bit heavy, and opening the gun requires a little downward tug on the barrels. The latter will likely improve with time, the former might require a polish, but in the field, it doesn’t seem to bother me. Hard to recall how many rounds went through this gun, or how many times I have taken it out into the field. Wild guesses would be 500-600 shells, and maybe thirty outings: hunting days, range visits and shooting during dog training and NAVHDA trial events.

The gun has not disappointed in terms of fit. If I do my job, don’t rush the shot, shoulder the gun cheek-first, keep my eyes on the birds, and don’t think, good things happen. I’ve made some amazing (in my world) shots, and had some events where I shot way above my pay grade. I attribute that mostly to the fact that my body and the guns dimensions just mesh. There are, however, a few things that need mentioning. It’s not all puppy dogs and rainbows.

The finish. I knew it. It started coming off within months of using it. Around the grip and trigger guard it is completely gone, similar on the bottom corners of the action; any place where your hands regularly touch it.

That was not the first issue. After shooting a few rounds of trap on the range, pins started coming loose. The pins that hold the cocking levers, and the one on the forend. As it happened at the end of the first season, I sent it back for a warranty repair. Months later the gun came back, with new pins installed, reportedly. The next range session, it happened again. Instead of sending it back once more, I used some epoxy to set them in place. So far so good. Time will tell.

Unfortunately, there is more. The forend has started to wobble. There is side-to-side movement, where there should be none. Easily remedied for now, by putting some electricians tape inside the barrel channels, but in time this may need gunsmith intervention. For just two seasons of fairly light use, that is disappointing.

Conclusion

Since I am the worrying kind, I worry about what issue might arise next. Clearly, the quality of this firearm leaves something to be desired. Or should I be fairer, and say: you got what you paid for. The next step up in price would easily put five thousand devaluated Canadian dollars on the credit card, and likely one or two thousand more. Such a price difference would have to show itself somewhere, in this case a finish that doesn’t deserve the name, poorly fitting pins, and (perhaps) improperly hardened or lower quality steel on the forend lock.

Maybe it is time to start counting my pennies, regularly putting some change into an old tin, and investigate what options are out there on the right side of affordable, without getting cheap. In the meantime, I’ll keep taking this gun up and down ridges, through swamps and coulees, and hope that magic keeps happening, every time the operator doesn’t get too excited and messes things up. Unfortunately, that still happens way too often.

Frans

Ruffed Grouse – The King?

“They like thick cover.” “Edge habitat.” “Undergrowth.” “Clover and berries”. “Young aspens”. “Cut blocks.” Advice on where ruffed grouse live is not hard to find. “Shoot them with a twenty-two on quad trails!”, and the best one: “They come wandering into my backyard when I’m outside barbecuing. I go inside, grab a gun, shoot them, and add them to the grill”. Hardly a bird worthy of the title “King”. Or is he?
  
 Finn’s bell tingled somewhere behind me, as I was pushing through a dense forest of young pines. They had grown so thick that the lower branches had died, letting through enough light for an understory of leafy shrubs, and even a low-to-the-ground plant with red berries.Kinnikinnik, I think. Bears like them, as demonstrated by a few piles of scat that were full of them. Why do bears even eat berries? It appears most of them pass through their system untouched. I hoped grouse liked them too.
My musings on the inner workings of a bear were rudely interrupted by a rustle and the drumming of wings! A grey ruffed grouse exploded from under my feet, and was out of sight in a second. Finn drew up behind me, and solidly pointed the spot the grouse had just left. We had found grouse! The dog needed no more encouragement, and dashed off looking for more encounters. I dashed off looking for a place to breathe. Grouse might live here, but short of clubbing them to death, there was no way I was going to get my hands on one. The thickets were claustrophobic to a man of the mountains and prairies.
By following the flushing birds we managed to push some into terrain where a gun could be shouldered unimpeded, more or less, and we managed to shoot two. Finn found a lot more of them, and I even saw some that he found, but mostly I heard an excited bark, the wings through the vegetation, and then Finn’s bell as he was off again.
Hunting these these birds is not an easy task, if you don’t want to “shoot them from the quad with a twenty-two”, something that would be severely hampered by the fact that I don’t own a quad, nor do I like being on one much. We never found them in open cover where a guy (or girl) would have a decent chance to get off a shot, and where we did find them, we couldn’t move. Ruffed grouse, The King of Upland Birds? Definitely the King of Hide and Seek.
F.

Shooting a limit, or the art of restraint

I stared writing this post a few months ago, but got sidetracked. Now A.J. DeRosa published a thoughtful article on Project Upland I will limit myself to a condensed version.

“Did you get your limit?”

What goes through your mind when you hear that question? I am appealing to the bird hunter here, or perhaps broader, the small game hunter. For big game, the limit often is one (I’m ignoring Eastern states in the US where whitetails are thicker than mosquitoes), but for birds limits are common. Daily limits, possession limits, how many birds can you shoot in a day, and how many can have in your truck and freezer combined.

“Did you shoot a limit?”

Tips and tricks to “get your limit” are prevalent on the web. Photos of hunters with a limit of birds on their tailgates are a dime a dozen on Instagram. Full disclosure, I have done the latter myself. A limit of
pheasants in Alberta is two birds, and you will not have to go back too far in my feed to find those two birds proudly displaced. And nothing wrong with showing some pride in accomplishing a good day of hunting: the dog worked great, your shooting was on par, you had a good time out.

The potential problem lies in the fact that a lot of the hunting takes place on publicly accessible lands, with no control over who hunts, how often it gets hunted, or how many birds are taken other than the daily and possession limits. And as DeRosa points out, in many cases those limits were set long ago, and may not have been scrutinized in a while. What really got me agitated about this “getting a limit”, was an Instagram post a year or so ago, where the poster and friends proudly showed their limits of chukar, that were obtained in the valley, the birds driven down by snow, huddled together waiting out the storm. “We didn’t even have to climb!”

I realize I have mixed up two arguments here: the notion that we have no real control over hunting pressure on a limited resource (the number of hunters chasing the same coveys), and the lack of restraint that some of us display regardless of circumstances. Chukars under normal circumstances live in terrain that is difficult enough to make them fly further than the average hunter wants to pursue them, but it is not very hard for a few guys with half decent dogs to decimate a covey of huns, shooting a few from the initial rise and following up singles, till they reach the imposed limits. That covey may not recover. Especially not, if the next day another couple of guys hunt the same area and come across the stragglers. How much nicer would it be to just shoot a few from the covey, and move on to find a new one. You see more terrain, you can stay out longer, enjoy more fresh air, and  pressure the birds a whole lot less. You may get a limit of birds, or you may not. But who cares if you have enjoyed a great day out?

It is a fine line between hunting smartly, and taking unfair advantage of circumstances. When it has been hot and dry, we might hunt near water. If it has been bitterly cold, we will look for pockets of open water to find migrating waterfowl. If the snow fell deep in the high country, we kill the huddled birds in the valleys. Somewhere along that spectrum, we went from smart to unsporting, or even to detrimental to survival of local populations. State or provincial/territorial agencies cannot control our actions at that point, it is up to the individual hunter to do a little soul searching and find that point when enough is enough.

Frans

Sage Grouse – Montana, September 2022

The sun had turned to orange early, filtered by the smoke of a nearby wildfire, and the dust of the two-track trail. All around, vast expanses of sage brush stretched to where nine thousand feet high ridges framed the scenery. The oppressive heat of the day still lingered, as our minds slowly started to shift from birds to the cool waters of the alpine lake ahead, and perhaps trout for dinner. Suddenly something stirred in the shrubs ahead. One bird head bobbed in the sea of grey-green leaves, shortly followed by a second. Sage grouse!

It all started with a spur-of-the-moment email to a friend in Butte.

“What do you know about sage grouse hunting in Montana?”

The response came quickly and oozed confidence: “I know everything about sage grouse hunting in Montana, my family has been hunting the opener for decades. We are going again this year. Why don’t you join us?”

Two days before the opener Finn, my seventeen-month-old Small Munsterlander, and I drove down, met up with my friend and his son, and set up camp the next day in time for a reconnaissance drive. Finn and I had chosen to stay in a tent. I like my privacy, and he would likely be too much puppy to allow for a quiet night in the trailer, with other people and other dogs. But mostly, I like my privacy.

The nights at seven thousand feet were cold. Despite the daytime mid-thirties (Celsius) temperatures, nighttime temperatures straddled the freezing mark. Though that notion had crossed my mind, I had still brought a sleeping bag that could not be cinched up across the shoulders. Rookie mistake. Finn was comfortable, I think, in his kennel, with fluffy pillow, wearing a jacket. I was not.

We hunted the early mornings, to avoid overheating the dogs. Finn was running big, using the freedom the long views provided, casting nicely left and right, like he had been doing this for years. A few hours were all we had, before the dogs started to suffer. I fed Finn all his water and most of mine
but halfway through the mornings it was time to call it. The area had a surprising number of alpine lakes and shallow creeks, when everything around it was bone dry. Both dogs and hunters took advantage of the opportunity for a cool swim after the morning’s hunt. Late afternoons, with the sun losing just a hint of its sting, we would saddle up again, slowly driving and walking two-track rocky roads and field edges, trying to spot moving birds.

The choice of fields to hunt looked random to me, as for a mile in all directions the terrain was featureless, but it was based on years of experience in this area. I was beginning to pick up small clues about what sage grouse might like. Fresh greens, of which we saw little, grasshoppers, which were ubiquitous, just not in every field. Water perhaps? Some animals get their moisture from plants, but things were pretty arid here. I just imagined birds hitting up water early morning, working their way up to higher areas to catch a breeze, perhaps to return to water late afternoon, before retiring for the night in cover. But that was just speculation.

The first morning we flushed a single sage grouse, and two huns, which all escaped unscathed. Finn had not pointed any of the birds, but he had seen them fly, and had decided to abandon whatever steadiness we had so tenuously achieved in the pre-season prep. I could not fault him, because I had forgotten all my intentions to focus on the dog with the first few birds, and help him remember. The dog did not know better, I should have.

 

That evening we found the bobbing heads near a small water course and just off the two-track. I suggested falling back and around to get downwind of the birds and letting Finn work the breeze, but it was decided to follow the moving birds, taking the leashed dogs with us. As soon as we had stepped
across the water, Finn’s nose glued itself to the ground, the tail started working, and he became a handful. To my great surprise we managed to get within range before the first grouse flushed. The big bird worked hard to gain altitude, and the shot was not hard. Training a pup and hunting an elusive bird do not go well together. Both dogs rushed in for the retrieve but got distracted by two more falling birds, shot by my buddy. Each grabbed one of the fluttering birds and retrieved nicely, and my bird was found not too much later. A nice male bird, perhaps not the biggest, but not a young of the year either. We cut off wings for the registry, and took breasts and legs.

The second morning was mostly a repeat of the first. We hunted a large swath of land, in semi-circular fashion, above a small water source. My friend connected first, missing birds in a covey, but then connecting with the third shot on a single. Finn was bullied out of the retrieve by the other dog, but he got another chance. First a pair of grouse were bumped out of range by my friend’s dog, but not much later I shot a single with the second barrel, as it was rocketing down and around the slope. Finn nicely
delivered to hand.

After a short, late-afternoon fishing session the next day, catching some cutthroats to add to the intended grouse dinner, we again found some birds. We tried to get organized, but waited too long and the grouse flushed. I followed them with Finn, on leash first, but as I got downwind, I let him run. The birds were in the open, and two grouse flushed out of range, but the third one hesitated, and once airborne, followed the downhill slope which curved towards me. I gave him a good two body lengths lead, and the bird crumbled at the shot. Another nice retrieve for Finn.

We investigated the crops of our birds and found they contained fresh leafy greens, and whitish, or light-yellow berries. We have yet to identify what those were. The fresh greens indicated that perhaps water courses, or the few fields that had not been grazed recently, were the preferred feeding areas this time of the year. But again, this is speculation, based on just a few observations.

At night, my friend’s son cooked us up a nice meal of cubed, breaded grouse breast, and cutthroat trout. A few cold beers went with that, and life could not have been much better.