I was super excited to be invited by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to do a presentation for its R3 Harvest Huddle Hour series about choosing a shotgun that's right for you.
It was, of course, inspired by my long struggle dealing with cross-dominance and a stupid-long neck - both of which taught me the importance of good fit, and inspired me to become adept at adjusting shotgun fit.
That knowledge has come in handy in my volunteer work with scores of new hunters, including lots of women (among whom cross-dominance is common).
One of my greatest passions is helping new hunters. Usually I do it at in-person events or on my own YouTube channel, but then Covid happened, and then the world Zoomed.
Here's a recent webinar I did for beginning hunters about how to hunt doves in California.
I've got two new videos in my series about processing ducks: how to pluck a duck cleanly (no-wax method), and how to recycle duck plucking wax. Why would you have duck plucking wax to recycle? Well, you can see why in another (much older) video about waxing ducks. Why would you want to wax a duck? Because it does a really good job of getting rid of down.
But for those who don't want to deal with the time and mess of wax, the method in the first video comes awfully close.
My house is littered with the unusual: A truly impressive accumulation of Hank's odd projects in various states of progress. Or maybe these things are just detritus that he left on our beleaguered kitchen table instead of tossing them. Sometimes they're both.
Really, it's too ridiculous not to share, so I've created a video series called "Hanksperiments." You can see the entire playlist here, and a recent one below. Enjoy!
When your boyfriend makes a living pushing the boundaries of what normal people do with wild food, you end up with a LOT of weird stuff going on around the house. This is what happened when he came home from a halibut fishing trip this weekend with more bait than halibut.
Did I need a new gun? No. But last fall, Benelli invited me on a hunt in Saskatchewan where I was one of four shotgun/hunting writers to try out the new Benelli Super Black Eagle 3, before it had even been released. I liked it a LOT, so as soon as it was available, I bought one.
The gun is getting rave reviews, so I figured there are people out there who might like to know how to do a few things with it, so I've made a few videos: how to assemble the SBE3 out of the box, how to reverse the safety and how to adjust drop and cast.
All three videos are below, as is the story behind the video about how to reverse the safety - feel free to enjoy a good laugh at my expense!
Now, the story:
As soon as I got my SBE3, I took it apart, reversed the cast and reversed safety so it was good for left-handed shooting. I had zero trouble doing it. So then the next weekend I did a re-enactment so I could make a how-to video.
Reversing the safety involves removing a retaining pin that holds back a tiny, 1/2-inch long spring. At one point in that process, I didn't realize I'd pushed the pin all the way out so I turned it around to look at it. Snap! ......... Plink!
Oh. My. God. The spring had flown out and hit something metal somewhere behind me, which could've been one of the dozens of photo prop tables I have, a sheet of corrugated metal, a refrigerater, a freezer, the Instant Pot sitting on the freezer, the electric slicer sitting on the box next to the freezer, the water heater, the washer or the dryer.
At this point it's worth noting that I was working up one of my MONSTER headaches and I was not feeling good, and getting more nauseated by the second, both because of the headache and my predicament. I watched the video up to the point where I started saying "Oh God" over and over. Unfortunately I had pulled the trigger assembly out of the frame, so I couldn't see which way it'd been pointing.
But it sounded like it had hit the corrugated metal behind me. Right underneath that metal was an enormous wad of duck blind camo grass, like a roll of brittle shag carpet. So I tipped it upside down and shook. Nothing. Then I started picking up and shaking every single photo prop/table. Then I tipped the frame that holds the tables and looked underneath. Then I reached into a corner that looked like a great place for a family of black widows and pulled every piece of junk sitting there.
Hank came home at that point, so I pulled him in. He pulled out the fridge. Took out all the pieces of camo grass and shook them separately. Helpfully (not) pointed out that it might have hit the rafters and gone God knows where. Dear God. Not the decoys! Nausea increased. I decided to look by the water heater and asked him to put all the grass back into its plastic bag, which is akin to putting a genie back in a bottle, which is to say it didn't really happen the way I'd envisioned.
While he worked on that, I began picking up each item of dirty laundry near the water heater and shaking it. This was mostly Hank's filthy gardening clothes and bloody elk processing towels and aprons, which is to say it was all dank and crusty. Still nothing.
Despondent, I resolved to give up and hit the Brownell's website to order a replacement spring and cancel my planned Sunday shoot at with a friend. So I put the laundry back in its pile, shaking each item again for good measure. And after the last item was on the pile, I looked down on the floor and there it was: the spring.
It had been two hours since I'd lost it. But my persistence - honed by 11 dogless seasons of searching for ducks that drop in terrible places - had paid off.
So, I rallied! I finished the filming, went inside the house, took some meds for the headache, and thanked my lucky stars.
So if you watch that video and you can see how much my hands are shaking as I work on the trigger assembly, it's because I could barely see straight at that point. But I got it done!
There are many legitimate ways to clean your gamebirds, but I have developed a method I like a LOT: fillet & gut. It's a great way to work cleanly, get all you can out of a bird, and maximize how much meat and fat you get off of it.
The short version is that I pluck a bird whole, then fillet it off the carcass. Then I separate breast, leg and wing on the meat side so I can see exactly where the muscle groups begin and end, as opposed to guessing while cutting each carcass off the whole bird. This is also cool because you're removing those parts before gutting the bird, and gutting is when you're mostly likely to puncture intestines and get poop on your meat. This is not the end of the world, of course - a good rinse will make everything fine again. But still, better to be clean from the start.
The next cool thing is when you've taken all the meat off the carcass, you can pull off the breast plate like a lid and all the wobbly bits - heart, liver, gizzard - are waiting for you on top of the bird, no reaching up into the darkness and grabbing.
Here's the video that shows this process in detail. It's not short - just under 10 minutes - but if you're looking for a clean way to maximize your birds, this is it! And there's an FAQ below the video.
And here's an FAQ:
Q: Why not just cook the bird whole? A: Breast meat needs to be cooked hot and fast, and medium rare like a steak, and legs and wings need to be cooked slowly to break down the meat, which can be tough. If you cook the whole bird, you're either going to overcook the breast or undercook the legs and wings.
Q: Why did you save the feet? A: You can throw them into stock! Just like pig feet, which can be used for the same purpose, they contain collagen that makes your stock silkier.
Q: That duck looked easy to work with - why? A: Two things: First is after plucking it, I put it in the fridge overnight. It's much easier to slice a cold duck, especially if it has a lot of fat, which can turn your fingers greasy. The second is that he was a perfect specimen with very little shot damage to the body. The reality is that birds killed with a shotgun will be messier, especially if shot hits the guts.
Q: What do you use duck fat for? A: It's a great substitute for butter or cooking oil in many recipes. When I pan-sear duck breasts (my favorite treatment), I start with a bit of duck fat in the pan. I'll throw duck fat into the rice cooker too.
Q: If I break the gall bladder, will it ruin the meat? A: Nope. Just rinse whatever that nasty juice touched. If it still smells bad to you, pat it dry and put it on a paper towel in a covered container in the fridge and check it the next day. I find a lot of smells that are present during cleaning disappear with a little time.
Q: What do you do with all the parts after breaking it down? A: I rinse and pat dry everything then put the parts on paper towels in plastic containers and let them sit in the fridge for 2-3 days, changing the paper towels once or twice a day. This brings out extra moisture and the meat ages just a bit, condensing flavors. Then I vacuum seal and freeze anything I'm not going to eat within one week of the day I shot the bird.
California Waterfowl's Women's Pheasant Hunt Weekend is very dear to me: Before I started working for CWA, I was volunteering for CWA, and this was my favorite event.
Located at Birds Landing between the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento, the event gives women the chance to get licensed, learn to shoot and try hunting for just $250. Because gear is provided, this basically means if they decide they hate hunting, they're out just two days and $250 because they didn't have to invest in a gun or hunting gear.
Of course, that's superfluous because the women always want to keep hunting. Check out the video from this year's event and you'll see why. And if you'd like to learn more about CWA's women's events, click here.
Virtually every wingshooter has heard of the mythic dove hunting down in Argentina: wave after never-ending wave of doves. Like every hunter, I've had high expectations dashed, so I've always wondered if it could really be that good down there.
Last week I found out: Yes, it can. It really is that good.
I spent the week with outfitter Maers & Goldman in Córdoba, Argentina, on a mission to photograph every angle of their operation, and of course to slip in a little hunting as well. The visuals were stunning, but I felt like still photos alone didn't do the hunting justice. Even when I caught a flock of 50 doves in the frame, that didn't convey the relentless intensity of the flight. What to do?
Answer: time-lapse.
Last Friday we arranged for the two best shooters in our group, Lex and Ken, to hunt together (hunters usually hunt alone there, though in a big, social line along the edge of a farm field, as we do here). I put my camera on a tripod behind them and set it to take one photo every second for 15 minutes - 900 frames.
The hunt turned out to be pretty average for the week - the big day had been Thursday. So what does average look like? The video is below - 1:12 of time-lapse. Be sure to watch to the end to see the numbers!
I am one of those incredibly lucky people who does work she loves (writing, photography, video, design) for an organization she loves (California Waterfowl). While my job can be stressful and tiring, I never lose sight of the fact that I absolutely love it.
The latest video I've done for CWA should help you understand why (unless you hate hunting, in which case you'll be horrified). If you want more than just the broad outlines, you can download our annual report online - it provides a lot of details and numbers.
This video is a compilation of photos and video from a variety of our events and activities. Major contributors were CWA employees Jake Gonsalves, who took fantastic photos at CWA summer camps this year, and Andrew Creasey, who started at the end of June and started banging out videos for us. I also used a lot of video from Mark Grupe Outdoors - Grupe did the school field day footage and the family hunt footage.
Enjoy the video! I've watched it a thousand times - that's part of the deal with video editing - but it still makes me smile every time.
I work with a lot of new shooters and hunters, and one of the hardest things to explain is how much you need to lead a moving target with your shotgun. It seems everyone perceives it differently.
A while back I told my pal Phil Bourjaily I wanted to use a shotgun-mounted POV camera to examine lead, and he said that was the wrong choice of camera. "What you need," he said, "is a ShotKam."
He was right. Using a wifi connection to your tablet or smartphone, you can align the ShotKam's reticle, then get footage where a red dot (or some other marker) shows your exact point of aim. What an awesome invention! Bonus points: Playback is at 1/4 speed, so you can see clay breaking in glorious detail.
I'll do a thorough review of the ShotKam down the road, but for now I wanted to share a video that illustrates lead at all the stations of skeet. And if you can't wait for the review, run over to the ShotKam website and learn more about it there. Tell 'em I sent you!
"Got any stuff I can film this week?" I asked my coworker at California Waterfowl.
"Yeah, wanna go out with this wheat farmer tomorrow?" she replied.
"Sure!" I said. I actually had no idea that what this guy was doing would bring me to tears, repeatedly, as I worked on this video. If you care one shred about ducks, ducklings and giving back to nature, I hope you'll check it out. People are doing great things out there!
And if you're reading this by email and don't see a video below (Craig F.!), click on this link to check it out.
Yep, sometimes for my job, I get to spend the afternoon at the shooting range! But don't get too jealous - when you're shooting video, you don't really have much time to play with guns.
But this was a fun little video. Sportsmen's groups do this event every year where we bring California lawmakers and their staffs out to my own favorite range, the Cordova Shooting Center, for a little trap and skeet shooting. Click play on the short video below to see why.
And check out the nice double at 0:34 - beautiful follow-through on the second shot. That's Tracey Fremd, one of our past board members who served on California Waterfowl's legislative/policy committee. She's the one who first got me hooked up with CWA as a volunteer seven years ago!
For the fourth year in a row, my friend Judy Oswald and I have organized a fantastic event for women: the Novice Women's Duck Hunt.
It starts with a day of training ... no, wait. It started with a night of drinking, and THEN we started training the next day: shooting instruction, waterfowl ID, calling and plucking/gutting. The next morning, we all head off to a cluster of three duck clubs in the Upper Butte Basin.
This year's group of women was fantastic. They were excellent shots, they were super fun and a few got limits on their hunt, including one of the brand-newbies! Good stuff, for sure, and you can get an idea of the fun by watching this video:
Even after a full year at my new job as magazine editor for California Waterfowl, I wake up every day excited about, and proud of, what we do.
So when my boss tasked me with producing a video that encapsulates the wide range of our organization's accomplishments, I was stoked. It was an extraordinary amount of work, but I think the result shows pretty clearly everything that makes me so proud to work for CWA.
Enjoy! And if you're not yet a member, I hope this will convince you to join, which you can do here.
You could take a regular hunter education class if you were ready to start hunting.
But why would you do that when you could do something like this instead?
I shot this video at California Waterfowl's Family Camp in June, one of many hunter ed camps we do at our property in the Suisun Marsh, Grizzly Ranch. At this one, kids and their parents go through hunter ed together, but we've also got kids-only camps, adult-only camps, women's camps - you name it.
This was incredibly fun to shoot - didn't even feel like I was working. Check it out, and if you know someone who's ready to start hunting, please share it with him or her - there's still time to sign up for more camps this summer.
A couple years ago, California Waterfowl was lucky enough to acquire Grizzly Ranch, a fantastic duck club in the Suisun Marsh, just south of Fairfield.
We do a lot of hunts and educational programs there, which is awesome, but summer is when everyone gets a chance to come check out the club's wicked sporting clays course during our monthly fun shoots. Check out the video below for a preview of the course, and if you happen to live a reasonable driving distance from Fairfield, come join us! Fun shoots are held the second Saturday of the month through September.
Newbies are welcome too - we have instruction for beginners.
Pre-registration is required, as is non-toxic shot, because the course is actually in the marsh. For more information, go here.
