Taking time to teach youngsters can create lifelong hunters

The upland game bird season started with a bang last weekend as young hunters like Cody Newberry shouldered their shotguns and took to the field for the first time. With his dad, Hoss Newberry, playing the role of bird dog, Cody bagged a limit of chukar and a quail to boot. The father-son team took advantage of the two-day youth hunt that took place last weekend.

''He's ready to go,'' exclaimed the senior Newberry, a gentle giant of a man I've known since he was just about Cody's age. I couldn't see Hoss' face as he shared the story of Cody's first bird hunt because ours was a telephone conversation, but I could feel his excitement in the words he chose.

''It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun, too. We can't wait for the regular season to get started,'' Hoss said.

My hats off to Cody and any other new hunter who can bag a limit of chukar, but Cody's shooting ability is no accident. The young wing shooter is a member of the Silver State Clay Breakers and competes in the Scholastic Clays Target Program. In August 2008, Cody's team won the national championship in its age division at Sparta, Ill.

The same day I heard the story of the Newberrys' adventure, I received a phone call from the proud mother of a couple of young hunters who bagged a half-dozen quail and a few rabbits. Like the Newberrys, they were hunting in Southern Nevada. She said they, and the other youth hunters they met in the field, found birds in the areas they hunted to be plentiful enough to provide some good action. However, many of the young hunters were having trouble connecting on their shots.

The problem many novice bird hunters have when it comes to hitting birds on the wing is flock shooting. This problem manifests itself as a covey of birds takes flight, but it also can occur with two or three birds if the hunter is excited enough. As the birds leave the ground, the shooter brings the shotgun to his shoulder but simply points it in the general direction of the entire covey and pulls the trigger. The shooter's hope is that enough lead will fly in that direction to actually hit a bird and make it drop, but generally that doesn't happen.

Most often the result is a clean miss or, worse yet, a wounded bird that is difficult to find and retrieve. When taking new wing shooters into the field, especially those with limited time on clay birds, teach them to pick one bird and focus on it. Allowing them to load only a single shell in the gun at a time will force them to concentrate because they know they have only one shot rather than three or four. As they learn to concentrate on that single bird, no matter how many birds are in the covey, they will enjoy increased success and put more birds in the cooler.

Another problem some new bird hunters have is leaning away from their shotgun. They raise the shotgun but lean back at the hip rather than forward and into the gun. Sometimes the shooter doesn't know any better, and sometimes this is just a bad habit. This also happens if the gun is too heavy. All three causes can make hitting birds difficult.

While at scout camp this past summer, one of our young men had a difficult time finishing his shotgun-shooting merit badge because he couldn't hit the clay targets. I noticed right away he was leaning away from the gun. So I found a stick about the length of a shotgun and instructed him to walk near camp, pick a target and shoulder the stick as he would a shotgun while focusing on the intended target. The next day, the scout busted more than enough targets to earn his badge. The smile on that young man's face made the few minutes of instruction more than worth the effort.

Those of us who escort these new hunters into the field for their first time can serve them best by focusing on helping them rather than filling our own bag. Kind words and a gentle reminder can go a long way toward making a lifelong hunter.

Freelance writer Doug Nielsen is a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His "In the Outdoors" column, published Thursday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is not affiliated with or endorsed by the NDOW. Any opinions he states in his column are his own. He can be reached at dougnielsen@att.net.