Invited a newbie along today. He indicated that he was a good shot so he shouldn't have any trouble collecting a limit if the birds co-operated. Well he was a newbie alright. First time ever in a goose blind! Watching the poor fellow even try to work his 870 was painful. Constantly jammed it or struggled to pump it especially after emptying it and having to reload it in the confined space of a small blind.
After the first flock of geese came in at 15 yards and he never cut a feather he was sure owl eyed. "I don't get it" he said. I have no trouble hitting grouse". I said "based on where you say you're hunting grouse I assume they are standing still or walking along the sides of logging trails and bush roads?" He says "yes". I said "that is rifle shooting with a shotgun buddy not wing shooting, this is an entirely different game".
The questions started pouring out with each miss and he came to realize he had no clue about shotguns, gun fit(which be had never heard of) and shotgunning in general. He didn't even know how to ID his chokes or what the constrictions meant in terms of range/pattern density(another term he'd never heard). I thought oh boy what have I got myself into here?
So we plugged away at a few more flocks that worked close enough to shoot. We got betrayed by a 180 degree wind switch right at legal shooting time and had no chance to change the spread as birds showed up(Specks) by the hundreds at a time.
We managed 9 Specks 2 of which he was able to collect burning through a full box of ammo in the process.
Poor guy had no idea what kind of geese he was even looking at. I figured after retrieving birds and saying a couple more Specks each time he'd realize we were shooting Specks but when we set about cleaning them he asks "so what kind of geese are these and how do you clean them?"
I realized this swap a waterfowl hunt for a pheasant hunt that brought this deal about was going to be one sided. Poor guy has no idea about any kind of hunting except wander around in the woods all day looking for deer and shoot a bonus grouse standing on a tree limb or trail or going to a few provincial pheasant release sights and hope to harvest a pen raised pheasant that is too dumb to run or fly from danger.
I invited him back for another hunt in the morning hoping he'll catch on a bit to what I'm showing and trying to assist him with learning about waterfowl hunting and shotgunning but I don't forsee him coming along again this season once some of my buddies from Ontario start rolling in to hunt come October. Nice enough fellow but next time someone on another forum asks about hiring an outfitter for a day I'm staying quiet instead of offering to take them along.
