What's your preferred caliber to hunt upland game birds?

brybenn said:
Not all ontario is equally distributed with dumb birds. What few grouse we have in the real south western areas are like shooting olympic skeet. They flush at 40 to 50 yards and fly fast and hard. Ive never seen one on the ground here. You hear the wings and hope its still in range by the time you get eyes on it flying thru the trees.
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That's about what we get here. It's worse with a dog. No chance with a 22.
brybenn said:
Up north theyre dumb. You can miss and they stand there and look at you
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That's how I learned grouse hunting in northern Ont. at our moose camp. I sure got a shock when I moved here 35yrs ago.
 
For the frequent 20 gauge hunters, have you folks ever tried Prairie Storm #6? I had the opportunity once on sharptails, and wow I swear I had another ten yards of effective range with I.C. and Mod barrels. This is not recommended load for the close shooting in the briar thickets, too tight a pattern. But it will chop through branches quite easily, is your intended target hides behind them.
 
Brutus said:
For the frequent 20 gauge hunters, have you folks ever tried Prairie Storm #6? I had the opportunity once on sharptails, and wow I swear I had another ten yards of effective range with I.C. and Mod barrels. This is not recommended load for the close shooting in the briar thickets, too tight a pattern. But it will chop through branches quite easily, is your intended target hides behind them.
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On wingshooting grouse & pheasants with my 20 gauge guns, I usually use a high brass lead #7.5 game load, results are good... mid-season I go to a little tighter choke and #6 high brass lead game load for birds that are flushing a little further out. My troubles have been with 20 gauge steel loads on early season woodies and teal... where lead would crumple them and splash down stone dead, the 20 gauge steel loads put them down softly with more crippled... I have to find a better non-toxic 20 gauge load or switch to 12 gauge for my early shooting.
 
brybenn said:
Not all ontario is equally distributed with dumb birds. What few grouse we have in the real south western areas are like shooting olympic skeet. They flush at 40 to 50 yards and fly fast and hard. Ive never seen one on the ground here. You hear the wings and hope its still in range by the time you get eyes on it flying thru the trees.
Up north theyre dumb. You can miss and they stand there and look at you
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That's interesting.

Anyone in BC who wants to share their experience?
 
Rhythm & Soul said:
That's interesting.

Anyone in BC who wants to share their experience?
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In the three years I’ve been hunting grouse in the area of the Okanagan we live in my experiences have taught me a couple things, grouse are not stupid. One area I’ve hunted every year, birds are cautious and flush very quickly as well as stand around and and don’t pay much heed to you. The first year they weren’t very cautious, the second year they were extra cautious. Last year some of the birds were and some weren’t concerned with us, the only thing that differed each year was logging traffic.

The first year they were not actively logging, second year saw heavy logging all over the tenure that started early in the year and go all winter. Third year saw minimal logging, only in one small section of the greater area. So the years we saw lots of logging and traffic the grouse were very aware of people and vehicles on the main and secondary logging roads, they would flush immediately. This last year they were less cautious on the main roads and very lax on the secondary roads. They aren’t dumb birds in my experience but they react to pressure from what I’ve seen and will flush quick and fast when contact with humans was at a high, that second year when I was walking old trails or in secondary area without heavy traffic or logging it was business as usual and I easily got my daily limits but I was lucky to get a bird or two on the main roads or high traffic areas.

Like a lot of animals they can learn avoid potential threats, it’s not hard to see the patterns when you spend time in the same areas a couple years running. They aren’t dumb, I feel they don’t seem threatened by people when their interactions with people are low. We had a corner of one old road we drive up to get to a hiking trail, there were always 2-3 grouse in the same spots when you hit that curve. We always missed or had them flush on us initially, by the end of the month as soon as they saw us coming around the curve they would flush hard. I never did end up getting a bird on that corner no matter how far ahead I was looking or how stealthy we tried to be lol, they were definitely on to us.
 
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ButcherBill's observations are spot on.
It really comes down to activity, and hunting pressure. As the activity and/or hunting pressure picks up over the season, the birds become more wary.
I will say that different species do tend to be more flighty than others. Ruffies can start out "dumb" but become educated quite quickly. This could be becuase many birds each season are new, less mature birds without as much experience.
Spruce hens, are definitely less cautious than ruffies, but can also become flighty too.
Sharptails are definitely more flighty to begin with.
Blue grouse seem to act very similarily to ruffies. Living in higher elevations, I think they get less pressure overall.
My limited opportunities for Hungarian partridge has been similar to sharptails. Hard to get close to.
Have only seen chukar once, and they were definitely flighty. Did not have a shotgun or 22 with me at the time, so did not get an opportunity to try to harvest one. Will definitely be packing the 28 if I ever get back to that location.
 
I use to hunt moose with a great gang of guys from the London Ontario area that would come up every fall and they would get real kick out of how tame the grouse were up here. They would tell me stories about how wary/spooky the grouse were down where they would hunt, I would let them take grouse or two with my pellet rifle and they would get a thrill from that.
 
.22lr, .22mag or o/u 20g. Whichever one I feel like grabbing when I take the kids out. Usually when hunting, im hiking so dont always carry a chicken gun....
 
hoytcanon said:
Arrogant post... you don't know what the birds are like in his neck of the woods... they don't always sit still and wait for you get your crosshairs on their motionless head.
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After the first week of bird season and the flocks get split up and most of the dumb birds have been rolled in flour and deep fried it involves a bit more skill to fill the packsack with ruffies.
One smart old ruffie used to fly before I got to within 40 yds of his favourite perch tree.
Took me a week but I finally got him through stealth and patience.
His predictable pattern of roosting in the same clump of trees was his undoing.

The red cheeked spruce hens were quite a bit dumber and sat there while I shot their buddies as much on the last day as the first day of the season.
Their salvation was their inferior table worthiness.
The ruffies are better eating so I left the spruce hens pretty much alone.
 
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