Are they that smart you can’t get closer??
Yes, but no. They do get quite spooky. Sometimes even before the shooting starts - usually means they've been shot at before. But mostly, it's us and our preferred method of operation. We stop in a spot, start glassing, and shoot what's available from right there, without bothering to move.
Usually, we'll start a spot by taking some at under 300 yards. Then when either we feel we've put enough hurting on the close ones already - we always leave some for seed - or, they all go down and stay down, we start taking the longer shot opportunities. When we get bored, we move on to the next spot, rinse and repeat. As a general rule, we try not to shoot more than half of what we see. Leave seed for the future.
Back when we used to shoot a lot of private fields, we would try and kill them all, that was the price of admission to the private ground. Had a couple of days with over 200 'chucks doing that. With 50-100 being typical. Have not shot on private for a lot of years now though. Like I say, we only shoot what we feel like now, and that's usually around 50 a day. We're pretty relaxed and casual about it, not making any real effort to put up any numbers.
- DAA