Reel Teal said:
People Skybust because they aren't confident as to what the ducks will do. So they shoot as early or as close as they think they will come in. Sometimes they need to see it first hand how a bird works in or they need to be told by someone they have respect for. That's generally the main culprit. Someone who is confident birds will swing and who can tell by their behavior where they are going won't Skybust them.
I don't agree. And this could be what do we mean by skybusting.
Reel Teal said:
I guess my point is, some people just need to gamble and see if they want to come back, if they do then you know how it works. If all you do is skyblast, they will never ever be in your decoys.
If you are killing ducks dead, it is not skybusting as I define it. I know very experienced guys that simply do not care if the ducks ever get "in the decoys" and will kill them the first pass in range. They kill them at ranges well beyond my comfort zone, but they kill them. It's not my thing. If I think I can get them in the decoys, most times I will let them pass even if well within my comfort zone. It costs me birds, but I don't care. I have the most fun with the ones that I get. But too each his own :beer:
Skybusting as I define it is what I saw a couple weeks ago at the next blind over. Three guns opening up on ducks and geese up high and dropping none of them and having one or two come down far away. If you can't shoot, you are skyblasting at any range.
When someone talks about how many they "hit" then you are probably talking to a skyblaster. If it doesn't bother you that you are losing cripples, you will blast away at pretty much anything that you think you might be able to hit. It's a mindset. Most outgrow it, but quite a few do not.
Reel Teal said:
Skybusting is still rampant in areas where there are shell limits too.
Agreed. Most skybusters don't seem to have self control. I just don't see this as slowing it down at all. And how do you do this on public waters?
Reel Teal said:
What if you want to go shoot things other than ducks?
Is it a crime to have more than 25 shells in your blind bag? Up north I may be hunting giant Canadas and wood ducks or even teal in the same outing. I typically keep 3 different loads in my blind bag and don't worry about swapping them out daily and only remove the lighter duck loads when the little ducks are gone and then the duck loads when ducks season ends. Then of course, there are coot and other things that some people shoot where you could have a combined limit of over 25. 6 ducks, 5 mergansers, 15 coot, ...
For managed duck or goose areas, I think it can work. Public waters open to all kinds of hunting. I don't.
The other thing that I don't like about it is cripples. I used to probably burn more shells shooting other people's cripples when we were hunting with my dog. It was nearly always me finishing off the cripples. I much prefer to do the shooting when shooting needs to be done when my dog is chasing a cripple that needs finishing. So now they owe me shells? :huh: How does that work? Although, other than snow goose hunting, I think there was only one time I shot more than 25 shells in a day. This was decoying birds in a really strong cross wind. WOW did we shoot bad, but every bird was in the decoys. I think we weren't account for the windage in our shots and shooting behind them. I don't know. They kept coming and we kept banging and way less fell than should have
Although, I think we only lost one cripple. I hope the rest were clean misses, but probably not :sad: