A while back, I was quail hunting with a young friend who was struggling mightily with the little brown bullets.
We were finding plenty of bobwhites in the piney woods of South Georgia, but my pal just couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. It wasn’t that he was a bad shot. I knew better from watching him pulverize clay birds by the hundreds on our local range. On the other hand, he didn’t have much experience with wild birds.
“Dang, those things are fast!” he exclaimed after emptying his autoloader into a covey rise to no avail.
“No matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to catch up to the little buggers!”
Finally, after a particularly ignominious series of misses, he turned to me and asked what he was doing wrong.
“You’re trying too hard. Just slow down. Take your time. There is a saying that I occasionally hear from the guys who really need to go fast. Race drivers and gunfighters come to mind. The ones I know are fond of saying, ‘Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.’
“It’s absolutely true. Focus on the first bird up. Slow down, relax and make the shot. Don’t even think about killing a second or third until the first one is down.
“It would probably help if you only loaded two shells in that self-shucker, too. Then you wouldn’t need to hurry to get off three shots. Of course, experience helps and if you adopt this practice, you’ll find yourself getting faster and faster. Then, one day you’ll realize that they aren’t really as fast as you think, and that you have plenty of time.
“If memory serves me, quail can only make about 35 miles-per-hour, flat out, after-burners on. And it takes them a while to go from a standing start to full speed. It has always seemed to me that Californias are a little faster and possibly grouse, as well. Chukars diving off a high ridge are pretty quick, too, but they all give you plenty of time. It’s just the noise and general commotion that make you think you have to rush.”
My young friend took my advice to heart, and by the end of the day, he was hitting much better. I hunted with him again this fall and he was lightning-quick, knocking down doubles regularly. When I mentioned it to him, he just grinned and replied, “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.”
Outdoor Chronicles is a collection of outdoor stories that will make you laugh out loud, and want to carry them wherever you go. They range from a fishing trip to Canada to a little stream that was better than remembered, to how the baby boomers almost trampled a sport to death, to a solitary trek during a cold, dark, and dreary February, and many more. Buy Now
