Monday, February 10, 2014

How To Aim For The Right Pheasant Hunting Lodges

By Jerri Perry


People who expect a rough outdoor experience at pheasant hunting lodges are in for a big surprise. This is not the kind of place where one camps out in tents or sleeping bags around a campfire, cooking the day's catch complemented with canned food. These are luxury lodges with well-equipped and spacious cottages, chefs to prepare sumptuous meals, and guides to help guests on the hunt.

But not all lodges are the same, and each one offers a different kind of hunting or shooting experience. Some will have pens of doves, pheasants, chukar and quails, and release the birds timed to help hunters who simply want to aim and shoot. There's no tracking or flushing involved, and all the shooter has to do is lock and load, wait for a flock of birds to be released, and then fire into them.

Bagging raised game is much easier, and a good catch is a virtual certainty. But this is more target practice than actual hunting where a lot of hard work goes into tracking down coveys using pointers. Shooting at a flushed out covey of birds in the wild is also much harder because it's so sudden and there's no time to prepare, aim and shoot in time before the birds get out of range. A hunting lodge that provides such real and challenging opportunities is the one that people should be looking for.

Of course, they have all the same kind of amenities including luxury cottages, on-site meals and all the comforts of modernity that people expect these days. Apart from the dogs, many lodges also offer training and hunting gear, if needed. Some will additionally offer to help with licenses and permits that hunters need for compliance with bird hunting regulations.

The key to a good lodge, though, is the type of hunting grounds and the quality of the game that inhabits it. In order for migratory birds to flock to the area and for the native ones to make it their home, the land must be cross-crossed by a network of waterways and reservoirs including rivers, canals, streams, marshes, lakes and ponds. Any property that has at least some of these things will be paradise for bird hunters and it won't be long before everyone hits their bag limits.

The choice of topography also makes a difference. Some prefer the vast plains of open prairie grass, while others are fond of mountainous forests and rocky ridges. Yet others may be partial to the marshlands close to the coast. The type of game and the difficulty level also changes with the landscape.

The holiday or bird hunt package also has quite a big impact. The most popular options are high-end 3-5 day luxury packages and affordable weekend packages. Regardless of package choice, all guests can forget about the usual holiday hassles and focus on what they came for, which is the pleasure of the hunt.

The adrenaline rush and thrill of the hunt is no doubt the most memorable part of the trip, but the second best thing about a stay at pheasant hunting lodges is meal time. First up, there's the extreme satisfaction of literally putting food on the table. What makes it a perfect situation is that an expert chef turns the fresh catch into an extremely tasty dish that tastes far better than bird meat usually does at home.




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