projectupland.com On The Go

While most of Kentucky is privately owned, Kentucky Fish and Wildlife owns or operates over 85 wildlife management areas available to the public. In addition to these WMAs, the state of Kentucky has opened up private properties to the public known as  Hunting Access Areas  in partnership with land owners. Read more at projectupland.com .

Let me be up front. Grasping the idea of shotgun chokes eluded me for many years. All that was ever explained to me was that the more open the choke, the faster the spread. Simple and accurate — but not helpful when it came to practical application. What I  wish  had happened was that someone would have said to me, “The choke you should use depends on the  distance  you are shooting at your game.”...

Hunting sage grouse without a dog -- is there such a thing? The fact is that many people hunt birds without a dog . Lots of times a big game hunt will need to add some diversity to the hunt, resulting in a walk with a shotgun. Other times people just want to get out in the uplands but don’t have the connivance of a bird dog or maybe just do not want one along. Sage grouse tend to live in big open...

If I were to make a top-five list of important gear when I go bird hunting, the Dogtra 2700T&B would be on that list right after my bird dog. That is a bold statement and maybe more of a confession of how much I've come to rely on this collar. In fact, this e-collar has become a part of my daily life, not just for hunting upland birds and training. Read more at projectupland.com .

We have all heard the legends of William Harden Foster sitting around upland campfires and no doubt at some point you may have heard him called the “Father of Skeet.” Through the years, that has been interpreted as the founder of skeet. But it turns out that even though he had a hand in  popularizing  skeet shooting, the famous ruffed grouse hunter, artist, and writer from Andover, Mass., did not ...

As you might guess from the name, the Eurasian collared-dove ( Streptopelia decaocto ) is not a native bird. In fact, its original range is in the Middle East and Asia, but they spread throughout Europe and were introduced to the Bahamas in the 1970s. From that short flight to Florida, it has had no problem colonizing much of North America in a very short timeframe. Like other dove and pigeon spec...

Earlier this year we put together a survey to explore the Project Upland audience to help get a better read on our community. We thank all of you who took the time to answer our barrage of questions ranging from bird dogs, shopping habits, culture, and of course your favorite game birds. As you may have caught our recent look into the  Top Three Bird Dog Breeds of 2019,  this is a less controversi...

My first look at the Stevens 555 over/under shotgun was at a media event in northern  Minnesota . There were a lot of guns available to tinker with, including several semi-auto  shotguns . Being a  double-barrel  fanatic, I immediately gravitated towards the new over/under from Stevens. It was the basic grade 12-gauge 555. I shot some clays with it, and it handled nicely. I wasn’t blown away by th...

I’m a card-carrying introvert. I tend to gravitate toward solitary activities and generally find social settings to be stressful. Perhaps the reason I love dogs so much is that I find it so much easier to interact with them! So it came as a huge surprise to me that one of the greatest things about getting into bird dogs was the new community that suddenly surrounded me. Read more at projectupland....

With its gigantic, fuzzy feet and snow-white coat, it didn’t take much creativity to name the snowshoe hare ( Lepus americanus ). This interesting little mammal is a dweller of northern boreal forests and high-elevation mountain ranges. Being at the bottom of the food chain, they can be very crafty and are extremely agile. If you’ve never encountered them before or just want to learn more, this is...

There’s no better way to incite a riot in the bird dog world than to talk about  breed  favorites. That’s why we do our best to cover  all  breeds and keep our personal preferences and opinions to ourselves. This article, however, is based on our community survey to see what the most popular bird dogs are amongst our upland world. There certainly remains a level of bias as Project Upland is a very...

Hunting  scaled quail  is different than hunting other quail of the semi-arid landscape. Scaled quail even though they may be in the same vicinity as  Gambel’s  and  Mearns , and yes even Bobwhite himself, are unpredictable in where they will be. Many bird hunters who go after cotton tops or blue quail, as they are commonly referred to in other parts, have a much more expansive range. The movement...

I grew up  squirrel hunting . I killed my first  Eastern gray squirrel  when I was in the fourth grade, which made me what, 7 or 8 years old? I can see still that grey squirrel crawl out on a limb of a dead snag. I can hear my Dad say “Shoot at his  head ,” and I cocked that little Winchester Model 37 .410 and did just that. This was over 50 years ago. I may like squirrel hunting more now than I d...

I knew that having a well-trained , versatile dog would improve our game recovery rate, which was one of the many reasons we’d decided to get a bird dog in the first place. I understood this from firsthand experience: I clearly remember shooting a duck in my first season and, after an hour of searching the reeds, I finally had to resign myself to empty-handed defeat. It stung to know that I’d take...

When I was researching the market and trying to find that safe kennel for my bird dogs, I came across Dakota283 at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas, Nev., in what I believe was their first year of production. I met the company’s founder, Greg Cronkhite, whose pride and passion for his product was evident — motivated traits that have carried Dakota283 to make great strides to the current day. Read more a...

The bottom line on the CZ-USA Supreme Field is that it’s a beautiful and solidly-built gun. And for a high-grade production alternative to bespoke guns, with the requisite price tag, I’d have a hard time recommending a better option. Read more at projectupland.com .

Dove hunting  is perhaps the easiest of the wing shooting disciplines. It is fundamentally the most basic of all hunting, a social hunt or shoot more than anything else. Dove hunting doesn’t require an abundance of gear or preparation. The most that must be done is a bit of legwork in the form of a little preseason scouting to find concentrations of doves. Once out in the field and after choosing...

Look, I understand. You’ve seen countless social media posts about how productive this corner of the state is. Your news feed is stacked with photos and stories of covey after covey that hold tight for dogs with any suggestion of point drive. In reality, the vast majority of these photos were taken by local dedicated bird hunters with dogs that have a Ph. D. in the habits and terrain of their loca...

Whether you live in ruffed grouse country or are inspired to take a trip to covers around the United States or Canada, it’s important to have a basic understanding of how to hunt ruffed grouse. A simple look at the basics can start the wheels turning into more advanced techniques and ideas for successful ruffed grouse hunting. Read more at projectupland.com .

On October 19, 2018, sunny skies combined with blustery winds and warmer temperatures, 25 mph and 63 degrees to be exact, led to an oddly successful day in the grouse woods. Too warm and too windy to be considered ideal grouse hunting conditions, I hiked 9.24 miles and burned 2,624 calories over the course of 5 hours, 29 minutes and 36 seconds of hunt time. And best of all, after all the miles, mi...

If you want to start a fight just call someone’s Deutsch-Drahthaar a wirehair . . . I know, I’ve done it before by accident, which led to my want to understand it better. For those of us outside that world, we often scratch our head and wonder what  is  the difference between these two bird dog breeds? They started from the same bloodline, including such breeds as the  Pudelpointer ,  Griffon , an...

We know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. A squirrel is most definitely not an  upland bird . But it is one of America’s most common small game/upland mammal species. And only a couple decades ago, virtually every hunter was also a squirrel hunter. While the squirrels are still common, the squirrel hunter has declined substantially since then. That’s a real shame because the Eastern gray squ...

The Beretta SL3 is a marriage of the cutting-edge technology Beretta is known for and the old world craftsmanship of handmade guns. I think it is always necessary to point out the success and reliability of the Beretta 686 as a staple in a world of over-and-under  shotguns . This shotgun is even worlds past that, which leads to the  why  and  how . Read more at projectupland.com .

Lately, there has been an increasing amount of “heat” around the shotgun choices of upland hunters of every stage and stripe. Now, the rant that could follow that statement could be contained in volumes. Instead of adding to the rants, we have decided to take the approach of addressing each myth one-by-one over the course of time so as not to cause a larger and more hostile panic from any one camp...

Roughly halfway between the coastal town of New Haven, Conn., and the capital of Hartford lies the city of Meridian, the one-time home to the illustrious, fabled and renowned  Parker Brothers Manufacturing Company . The state of Connecticut has a storied history of firearms manufacturing and to this day is still home to some of the biggest names in the gun business. Small and large purveyors of th...