Oh, the hunting mistakes I’ve made!

RobinWhen I started to build a list of all the mistakes I’ve made while hunting, well, it turns out I made a lot more mistakes than I remembered! I guess that’s the trail we take to become successful hunters. For me, the trail was long and sometimes frustrating.

I started off on the wrong foot, when, at the age of 9, I snuck up to a robin, perched on a tree in our front yard, and shot it with my BB gun. Dad explained, quickly, how wrong that was! Seems appropriate that today I am an avid birder! With binoculars, not a shotgun!

About a half century later, I was hunting woodcock with my friend Jimmy Robbins in Searsmont, when we moved into a grow-over apple orchard. Jimmy told me to stand near an old apple tree on a knoll, while he took the dog and hunted down through the thick brush off to our right. He pointed to the far end of that piece and said to watch that spot, because that’s where the woodcock would fly out.

Focused intently on that spot, I listened as Jim and the dog moved down through the brush. And there it was! The bird flew out of the brush right where Jimmy said it would, and I quickly raised my shotgun and made one of the best shots of my life, knocking the bird down as it sped across the clearing in front of me. It went down into the bushes below me.

Jim and the dog emerged right after I shot and I pointed out where the bird had gone down. I knew something was wrong when the dog went over to that spot, looked down, then lifted its head and moved away. Jim went over and picked up the bird. I had shot a robin!

The first time I ever hunted woodcock with Jimmy, we were in a set of alders when the dog pointed a woodcock. I walked over to the bird, and it took off. I shot it at about 10 yards. When we walked up to the bird, there was very little left of it. Jimmy kindly explained that, in the future, I should let the bird get out a bit farther before shooting. And he left the bird there, not counting it against my limit for the day.

Ok, so I’m still not perfect, at least when it comes to hunting. I actually gave up bowhunting because I just was not good enough at it. I seemed to shoot well in competitions at inside ranges, but I never had enough confidence to hunt deer with a bow. But I did try to hunt turkeys with the fancy expensive bow I’d purchased. I had a terrible time judging distances. I shot under and over turkeys and lost half my arrows in the process. So I went back to the shotgun.

I hope these stories of my game mistakes inspire you to do better!

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.