Jun 1, 2026 · 25 min · 11 segments
So, you want to be a better bird hunter. On this episode, I share some tips that I think will help you up your game in the off season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Number one, and if you have listened to the podcast for very long, you should already be able to guess this one, and that is practice, particularly sporting clays, skeet, trap shooting, whatever's available to you.
I think sporting clays is the best, but anything that allows you to shoot a clay target out of the air will help you, in my opinion, more than just about anything else can.
Whether you're talking about ducks, pheasants, doves, I think practice is the single best thing that you can invest into to bring more birds home.
Get out there in the spring, in the summer, in the early fall, and not just one time a year, but make it a point to get outside and do some practice.
Get somebody to give you feedback, even if it's informal, just to give you tips on how to improve your form, how to improve your strategies, how to get more birds down, and how to maximize the shots that you get in the woods.
A lot of folks, they'll never, ever go shoot sporting clays because they think it's so expensive, but they'll spend all kinds of money on shotguns and choke tubes and ammunition and fancy ammunition and clothing and boats and boots and decoys and calls and all sorts of other things.
They'll pour maybe thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars into everything else that goes along with hunting.
Camps and leases and everything else, but, oh, it's too expensive to go shoot sporting clays a couple times in the summer.
I don't think there's any money you can spend that would be better invested than sporting clays practice.
Yeah, it costs a little bit of money, maybe more than a little bit, but it is also a lot of fun, and it will do or can do at least a lot to build your skills for all different kinds of shooting and hunts, and that's my favorite.
I think it's a lot of fun, but a good sporting clays course where you might shoot 100 targets or even you do a half course, you shoot 50 or whatever the course size is in your area, different angles, different directions, mimicking different scenarios, different kinds of birds.
Number two thing that you can do in the off season, ammo and choke tube testing.
Number one, and if you have listened to the podcast for very long, you should already be able to guess this one, and that is practice, particularly sporting clays, skeet, trap shooting, whatever's available to you.
I think sporting clays is the best, but anything that allows you to shoot a clay target out of the air will help you, in my opinion, more than just about anything else can.
Whether you're talking about ducks, pheasants, doves, I think practice is the single best thing that you can invest into to bring more birds home.
Get out there in the spring, in the summer, in the early fall, and not just one time a year, but make it a point to get outside and do some practice.
Get somebody to give you feedback, even if it's informal, just to give you tips on how to improve your form, how to improve your strategies, how to get more birds down, and how to maximize the shots that you get in the woods.
A lot of folks, they'll never, ever go shoot sporting clays because they think it's so expensive, but they'll spend all kinds of money on shotguns and choke tubes and ammunition and fancy ammunition and clothing and boats and boots and decoys and calls and all sorts of other things.
They'll pour maybe thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars into everything else that goes along with hunting.
Camps and leases and everything else, but, oh, it's too expensive to go shoot sporting clays a couple times in the summer.
I don't think there's any money you can spend that would be better invested than sporting clays practice.
Yeah, it costs a little bit of money, maybe more than a little bit, but it is also a lot of fun, and it will do or can do at least a lot to build your skills for all different kinds of shooting and hunts, and that's my favorite.
I think it's a lot of fun, but a good sporting clays course where you might shoot 100 targets or even you do a half course, you shoot 50 or whatever the course size is in your area, different angles, different directions, mimicking different scenarios, different kinds of birds.
Number two thing that you can do in the off season, ammo and choke tube testing.
Every episode on Radar is fully transcribed, speaker-labeled, and rich with metadata. Here is a taste of this one. Try Radar for free to see the rest.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
All 11 segments — the transcript broken into labeled sections, every ad read marked
All 17 topics — jump to every other episode discussing the same subject
Every related episode — other shows Radar links to this one
No account is needed to search Radar.
