444 
Forest and Stream 
GUNS AND LOADS FOR UPLAND GAME 
THE MAIN REQUISITE FOR SUCCESS ON QUAIL AND GROUSE IS 
A LOAD THAT WILL GIVE AN EVEN PATTERN OF GOOD SPREAD 
T he opening of the quail or grouse 
season is the important annual 
event in the life of nearly every 
upland hunter. We all look for- 
ward to it for months, make countless 
plans for it, and when the big day comes 
most of us are to be found somewhere 
in our favorite grouse or quail cover. 
Sometimes those first few days are a 
sad reminder that “not everything that 
ends well has a good beginning.” The 
shooting is usually fine; frequently it is 
unusually good, but the results in the 
game pocket are not always up to pre- 
vious expectations. 
The famous baseball slogan of “he 
hits them where they ain’t” seems to 
have worked overtime, and 3 P. M. of 
the first day finds a good many hunters 
firmly convinced that they are no longer 
the shots they once thought they were. 
Most of the unaccountable, easy misses 
are caused by a slow-working brain and 
trigger-finger. That instinctive snap- 
shooting ability of the years before that 
would drop bird after bird on the hardest 
of snap shots has been lost by lack of 
practice during the closed season. 
The gun seems awkward and unusual- 
ly heavy. It fails to snap into position 
with the speed and precision of yester- 
year and sometimes to some who are 
softened up by lack of exercise or shoot- 
ing, it seems to kick like a mule. These 
things are exasperating, but nearly all of 
them are caused by lack of recent prac- 
tice, over-anxiety, undue fatigue from 
hiking over hilly country, and the loss 
of the ability to see a bird in the brush 
as soon as it flushes. 
COME years ago a friend and myself 
spent the first day of the quail sea- 
son in a half-mile-long brushy ravine 
that harbored some sixty quail. We 
fired possibly fifteen to twenty shots 
apiece for a grand total of one dead bird. 
The quail were enjoying the shooting 
immensely, but we were both practically 
exhausted from tramping the brush, and 
had but two hours of daylight remaining. 
So we called a council of war, spent one- 
half of the time in taking a complete rest 
and collecting all of the fastest loads 
available, and in whistling up the birds 
so that they could be located and flushed 
most easily, and then w'e sailed in. 
That rest did wonders. We made the 
feathers fly right from the start and had 
one of the best hour’s shooting we ever 
enjoyed. I believe I only missed one 
bird out of some ten or a dozen shots. 
Another thing that causes a lot of 
misses in quail and grouse shooting is 
the almost universal practice of using 
guns that shoot too close. This is par- 
ticularly evident when shooting in thick 
brush. Nearly every bird is out of sight 
before it flies over five to fifteen yards, 
By C. S. LANDIS 
and consequently the hits with a full 
choke gun are often few and far be- 
tween. The birds that are hit under 
these circumstances are often badly 
mangled. 
English sportsmen generally use better 
judgment in these matters than we do 
and have guns for grouse or pheasant 
shooting that are bored improved cylin- 
der and modified choke — and they get 
the birds with plenty of them on long 
hard shots at that. Most of our more 
experienced grouse and quail shots use 
the same type of gun boring and they 
get equally good results. We still have 
a large class, however, who will persist 
in severely handicapping themselves by 
using a gun that was never intended for 
bird shooting. I have done it for years 
and would probably still be doing it if 
it had not been for an experience that 
was so humiliating that it drove home 
the truth with such force that I was 
compelled to listen to reason. 
A couple of years of persistent prone 
rifle shooting had slowed up my speed in 
snap shooting, and as a result one sunny 
afternoon in late November I missed 
eight consecutive chances at ruffed 
grouse that were feeding among some 
clumps of locusts and thorn bushes at 
the edge of an open field. Nearly every 
bird gave an easy, open shot with both 
barrels — that is, an easy shot at grouse 
— which by most standards would still 
be amply difficult. Not a feather 
dropped. The net result of this day’s 
shooting was that those barrels were 
both bored out to shoot a more reason- 
able field pattern. Consequently the 
nex«t time that gun went afield the first 
eight shots resulted in seven dead birds. 
Too many of us listen to the siren of 
the high percentage pattern, when actu- 
ally not one man in a hundred can shoot 
well enough to use a 65 per cent. 12- 
gauge gun for most field shooting with- 
out definitely guaranteeing himself a 
couple of misses before he goes hunting. 
A 45 to 60 per cent, pattern and small 
shot mean clean kills — twice as many of 
them — and very few mangled birds in 
average quail and grouse shooting. 
N OW let us look at the ballistics ot 
a few grouse and quail loads. The 
figures used are average velocities. They 
were taken over a 40-yard range and 
correspond to the striking velocity at 
about 25 yards. Most quail are killed 
even closer. 
A good grouse load for the 12-gauge 
is 26 grains, or 3^ drams of bulk 
powder, and 1J4 ounces of No. 7 shot. 
It depelops 910 foot seconds velocity. 
Twenty-four grains and one and one- 
eighth ounces develops forty foot sec- 
onds less velocity, or 870 foot seconds; 
while 24 grains and one ounce, which is 
fine for light weight field guns, develops 
890 foot seconds, only 20 foot seconds 
less than the 26, lj4 oz. load which in 
No. 6 shot is a standard duck load. 
Many use it in 7’s. 
In the 20-gauge, 18 grains and % of 
an ounce of No. 7j4 shot develops 843 
foot seconds with 863 for 18 grains and 
^ of an ounce. The use of a half size 
smaller shot to step up the pattern a 
bit, cuts down the velocity a trifle. 
Eor quail, most shooters use 24 grains 
(or 3 drams bulk), and 1)4 ounces of 
No. 7)4 or 8 shot. In 8’s this charge 
develops 852 foot seconds ; in 7^’s, 862 
foot seconds. The snappy load of 24 
grains, 1 oz. develops 872 foot seconds 
with 8’s and 881 with 7)4. 
These loads are plenty heavy enough 
for quail shooting. One of the cleanest 
killing loads I ever shot on full grown 
birds, when using a double gun bored 
improved cylinder and strong modified 
w'as 22 grains (2^ drams) and 1 oz. of 
8’s. It killed bird after bird as dead as 
a stone with no trouble from mangling. 
I had one run of seven straight with this 
load, on a briar-covered hillside, getting 
the birds as they dove through the tops 
of some locust trees twenty to thirty 
yards off. This was hard shooting 
without the help of a dog and was quite 
different from the clay bird style of 
quail shooting where you drive up and 
shoot them over a couple of close-work- 
ing pointers over wheat stubble. 
The main thing necessary in a quail 
load is an cz'cu pattern of good spread. 
The shot should be evenly distributed 
clear out to the edge of the pattern and 
here is where an improved cylinder or 
modified choke has it on a full choke at 
fifteen to thirty yards. Too many birds 
are caught in a 12 to 20 inch circle that 
are only tipped by a very few of the 
{Continued on page 472) 
