Duck hunting shotgun question...

[Ontario Hunter]

I don’t have a camo knife for this reason, but I can’t imagine actually loosing a shotgun after setting it down. Are you saying that they never recovered or simply had a hard time locating them?

I have made this mistake many times with a black shotgun. Haven't lost it yet but close once. Had to help my dog up out of a canal and set the gun down. Ellie likes to parade with a downed dead bird and sometimes I have to go to her to end the show. And it's usually necessary to remove my vest to get a rooster in the gamebag. Yesterday I set the gun down and went to her. Loaded up the bird and turned to find my gun in the grass. Had to look for it for maybe five minutes and I didn't walk away ten yards. Yeah, I coulda and probably shoulda broke her of that as a pup but I guess the dogs deserve to have some fun showing off. Crippled birds always come straight to hand. Dogs know the difference.

Tip: I wear size large jacket but only size medium upland vest. I need the snug fit (hence needing to remove vest to load a pheasant - smaller Huns or sharpies can be shoved into the gamebag through the front loading ports). Gun gets caught in a loose vest when mounting in a hurry. If shooting a jacket with sleeves it's not an issue. I've also had to remove the butt sling stud on my A5 as it was also getting caught in the vest. Don't ask me how, but it was quite an annoyance. The stud stays on the sling in my gamebag (sling is deployed when daily limit is filled or walking out in the dark).

 

[Ontario Hunter]

It is hard not to laugh when one of those big honkers burns in on top of the blind next to you. I have never seen any real damage other than a few full body decoys severely wounded in action.

Over the years I've had to fend off two falling geese with my shotgun. I'm convinced the first one was trying to get me. His head was down and appeared to be aiming at me. Kamikaze honker! I recovered and knocked down another with second shot. Pearl fetched that one up but wouldn't pick up the first one I batted away maybe four feet. "Go get it" "Why? It's right there. Get it yourself." It had died shortly after impact. We were then done for the day as I'd already taken a triple shortly after daybreak. Back then I only had a dozen shell decoys (now two dozen) + a limit of five honkers was a helluva load to haul off the field on my back. Now I have a cart but it's still a lot of work.

When hunting, the shiny wheels come off, shelf folds down, and everything is flattened and concealed underneath the empty camo decoy bag.

 

[Ridge Runner]

I have made this mistake many times with a black shotgun. Haven't lost it yet but close once. Had to help my dog up out of a canal and set the gun down. Ellie likes to parade with a downed dead bird and sometimes I have to go to her to end the show. And it's usually necessary to remove my vest to get a rooster in the gamebag. Yesterday I set the gun down and went to her. Loaded up the bird and turned to find my gun in the grass. Had to look for it for maybe five minutes and I didn't walk away ten yards. Yeah, I coulda and probably shoulda broke her of that as a pup but I guess the dogs deserve to have some fun showing off. Crippled birds always come straight to hand. Dogs know the difference.

Tip: I wear size large jacket but only size medium upland vest. I need the snug fit (hence needing to remove vest to load a pheasant - smaller Huns or sharpies can be shoved into the gamebag through the front loading ports). Gun gets caught in a loose vest when mounting in a hurry. If shooting a jacket with sleeves it's not an issue. I've also had to remove the butt sling stud on my A5 as it was also getting caught in the vest. Don't ask me how, but it was quite an annoyance. The stud stays on the sling in my gamebag (sling is deployed when daily limit is filled or walking out in the dark).

Yeah, been there, still doing that and for the life of me can't figure out how or why of all things that butt sling swivel +/-3 inches forward of the butt finds its way to interfere with mounting a shotgun or rifle.

 

[Dirtdart]

When hunting, the shiny wheels come off, shelf folds down, and everything is flattened and concealed underneath the empty camo decoy bag.

The decoy cart we used was a 14' cargo trailer packed to the gills pulled by a crew cab 4x4 pickup. I never did any solo hunts for geese it was more of a squad size operation.