aunt betty wrote:I've tree-topped a couple out of desperation.
Your trees must be a lot taller than where I hunt. There are not many trees over 100 ft (33 yards). Tree top high is a dead goose. That's exactly how I killed a large fraction of the geese when I first started hunting out here. Flyovers, that were tree top high. There are some gaps in the tree line, so the geese that are low tend to pass over these areas instead of passing just above the tree tops.
I still whack 'em when they come over when I'm duck hunting there. I just don't go out of my way to hunt where they are more likely to come over only at the tops of the trees. Then I was happy to get a goose any way I could. Now, I'd probably trade 1 goose I called in feet down under 20 yards for 5 or 10 geese flying over. If I think I have a chance at decoying geese, I've passed at easy flyovers. If I have any doubt about distance I don't shoot versus back then if I had doubt I did shoot.
Rick wrote:merrily banging away at birds well over 100yds above
I just never understood this. What's fun about that? I get it when you first start out and you don't have a clue, but it doesn't take that long to realize you are shooting air.
What pisses me off, and there are guys at my club who will shoot a lot of ducks out around 50 yards. They knock a lot of them down and lose a very large fraction of them. A lot of places there it is a bitch to recover your birds. Even with a dog, you will lose a lot of cripples. It's just how it is. You have to be smart, but they bang away on those birds hung up, knock 'em down and lose most of them.
That's worse than shooting air with birds 100 yards away.