There are places to hunt in California particularly for those who have never hunted before. I personally prefer taking people who have never hunted before to go to these “pay to play” places so novices can learn. It’s also a great group activity to walk around looking for these birds while utilizing a dog to go out and smell and track them down. That way, people understand how this whole thing works and aren’t walking around in circles complaining that they didn’t see any birds.

Actually, you use the dog to help you find the birds and even retrieve them in case the flying meat hamburgers decide to high-tail away to a safe place.

Some of the birds that were harvested from the hunt.

On this group hunt, I got a pheasant and 3 Chukars while being part of a group hunt. I think we were supposed to get 16 birds but we ended up harvesting 18! All because the other groups lost a few in our field.

The problem about these places is that they might be located quite far so it can be a long drive to get to these locations. But there’s a good reason for it as they have a LOT of real estate where they can provide hunters plenty of space to track down birds like in real hunting. For those who come from an area where hunting is difficult to do then this is a great place to do it! Good to do some practice shooting because shooting sporting clays is totally different from the real thing!

Contact:

Quail Point

http://www.quailpoint.com/

Finally, I get some time to hunt something in motion in the air AND at multiple targets. Other than hunting pheasants on Jeju Island or going pig hunting, it’s been long while since I’ve gone hunting and harvested some meat! Better late than never – living with no regrets now. Time to go after these birds since the winter winds and weather have been forthcoming. Bad weather such as the cold and winds from the north will result in the best time to go duck hunting (or for geese as well). So time to put on the camo, bust out the duck calls, the shotgun and shells, and prepare thyself for the incoming ducks.

Whenever I go duck hunting, I’m usually aiming for puddle ducks, but a diver duck hunt sounded very interesting to go do.

And yes, people do go a little bonkers when they find out that I hunt and it’s in the state of California. C’mon now, people do have to eat but I guess they just don’t remove the invisible barrier in their minds or so that this kind of stuff happens like what our caveman ancestors used to do. Unfortunately, most people nowadays do their food hunting in stores and restaurants so there is a major gap of understanding of where our food comes from.

Unfortunately, duck hunting is kind of a difficult to show off in pictures as the birds are small and pale in comparison to big deer or pigs or even fish. However, duck hunting is still fun as you have to pick your chances to shoot the birds out of the air and the one trip that I took was a very interesting one as I went for diver ducks as we’re hunting an area that I visited before for sturgeon fishing except we’re on this jutting small peninsula into brackish waters. The guides set up the blinds and explained how it worked – we’d shoot when clear/safe to do so and the other guide would retrieve the ducks with the boat.

Real early in the morning and you can see industrial facilities with their lights on.

Then the weather changes to where it’s raining and sunny all at the same time, producing a rainbow.

I limited out while diver duck hunting and I learned a lot on how to shoot these diver ducks. Most of the diver ducks are not that good-looking with the exception of the Bufflehead, but even then you have to look up at it to get the full spectrum of colors.

Diver duck hunting guide:

https://www.nwindoutfitters.com/index.php