What's going on everybody and welcome to another episode of Lone Ducks Gun Dog Chronicles.
We've got a really fun episode that's different than I had a blast talking to him.
I could have talked to him for a lot longer.
His name is Lars Jacob.
He's a wing shooting instructor on the wing, the feather, not just claybirds, which was
a really cool philosophy to learn about and hear about.
He's also a super intelligent gun man.
We talked a little bit about my stock of guns that I enjoy shooting.
He's just a super smart, super fun.
I hope you enjoy the episode.
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Join the community.
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Check it out pretty soon, whether it's before or after the show airs.
We're going to have a new website with all totally revamped with some new gear.
Check that out.
We're really excited to be relaunching the website with even more products, even more
lone duck gear, but just anything you can think of, it's going to be awesome.
Lastly, our force batch course.
That's me teaching you how to do it yourself.
All the tools and tips and tricks on a bunch of different dogs, bunch of different breeds,
links in the description, click that, follow along.
And I think it's going to really, really help you get your dog to the next level.
Next up from the duck blind to the holding blind, baby, it's Purina.
Our food that fuels the truck alone duck, the older dogs around the 30 20 blend and the
younger dogs around the large breed puppy formula, which they should stay on for about
a year.
And then you can switch them over to the adult 30 20.
Next up, goner canals.
You know it man's best panel.
Right now back at home, Kevin's dogs are riding in the bed of his truck in the gunner
canals and to keep them warm, they've got the all weather kit as well as the cold weather
door.
It's keeping the core body temperature of the dog inside the kennel.
So the dog has to expend less energy staying warm in the colder time.
So when you're traveling down the road, going training, going duck hunting, going grouse
hunting, make sure they're not only safe, but they're also toasty, toasty warm.
Next up, shooter shoot baby that is from Kent cartridge, Kent on Instagram, man.
I am excited, especially talking to Lars today about shooting instruction and how to be a
better shot on grouse, woodcock, ducks, pheasant, geese, etc.
I'm excited to practice and hone my craft.
So the next season when there's a bird presented to me, I will be more consistent with my shooting
Kent cartridge.
And last but not least, we'd like to announce that we've made a partnership with DT systems,
the e-collar company, DT systems.
This is a company that has approached us a while ago and we've been testing out their
products, their different line of e-colors along with their dummy launchers and pigeon
traps that launch the pigeons out.
You know our friends Ethan and Kat of Standingstone are huge supporters of DT and use everything
under the sun that DT provides, we're going to be that for the retriever community.
So we're testing products, we're working on revamping some of their products and we're
using their 1820 now while we're training.
So it's a super nice company, super good people, great products and we really appreciate them
coming on board and being a supporter of the show, a supporter of our YouTube channel,
which is going to continue to grow this year.
So please head over to Instagram, check out DT systems, tell them that we sent you and
be in tune for more to come from DT and the lone D.
Let's get into the show.
Lars Jacob, thank you so much for joining us tonight and do me a favor, tell everybody
a little bit about yourself.
Well thanks for having me on, this is great, I love talking about this stuff.
And as far as me, I've been just playing doing this for a very, very long time.
I was very lucky to have a father who was quite the adventurer and loved his hunting
and fishing and we spent a lot of time in the woods and on the water and it got to the
point where I decided that maybe this is what I know more than about anything else.
So I decided to make it my business about, I started hunting and fishing five decades
ago, but about three decades ago or a little more, I started making it my profession.
Very cool.
And your profession is?
I'm mostly shooting instruction, but I also help with introducing people to live bird
instruction and what kind of, you know, working behind dogs.
I offer a course at my shooting grounds where, because we have this new shooter who wants
to go out and learn how to walk up up and wants to learn everything about why the bird
wants that cover, why this type of dog is better suited for this type of hunting and
stuff like that.
So I have a very good friend of mine, Glenn Simone, who owns Peaceable Hill Farm in
Shoreham, Vermont, which is right in a fantastic Lake Champlain Valley.
And so I will do live bird instruction behind the individual, showing them how not to feel
rushed, show them how to represent or re-address themselves to the unexpected flush.
And we'll break it up and we'll start with his English setter and he learns this individual
will learn what it's like to hop behind a pointer.
And then we take out the English cockers and show them what it's like to hop behind the
flushing dog.
That's super cool.
And some, and I do a little bit of that in the waterfowl.
Unfortunately, my shooting grounds that I have done, work done has changed and we don't
quite, we're still working on an area where I can help out with the waterfowl shooter as
far as introducing to the dog and also the methodology for shooting waterfowl.
That's super cool.
So I'm assuming because you're up in Vermont, we're hunting woodcock and grouse.
Yeah, I mean, I travel extensively all over the place.
And prior to COVID and all that, I was traveling very extensively.
I was taking groups of people to Argentina.
We were going over to the UK.
In fact, just before the COVID, which was my last UK shoot, we were over there in November
for a fantastic driven bird shooting in Wales of Partridge Grouse and what was fun as the
occasional European woodcock, which is a far different bird than our woodcock.
But here in the Northeast, yeah, the grouse, rough grouse, woodcock, mostly puddle ducks.
I'll be honest with you, Vermont needs to do something about their duck season.
There really isn't enough hard cores here to lobby.
We've got about 10 days of woodies and teal.
And then we go absolutely blank until mid December.
And right now, Vermont shuts down mid December.
We really need a second half season that takes us into January now for this way, this new,
we just our lakes just froze up, just froze up.
That's incredible.
We feel the same way in New York.
Our birds don't, you know, a good group of birds don't really start showing up until December
in January.
We've just had such warm, warm falls that you'll get your maybe resident birds.
And then after a week or so of hunting them, they're scarce.
And then you don't get a new push until, I mean, sometimes even into January and then
we're done January 3rd.
That's right.
Yeah, that's tough.
It is.
It is.
And then, you know, I'm pushing for, you know, hopefully we'll get some more interest in
this state where we can split the, because the hardcore duck hunters in Vermont are all
up on the north.
They're all on the north or an end of Champlain.
They're right on the Canadian border.
And right now the season still works for them somewhat.
So they need to get the southern zone to say, okay, we have, we're going to have to split
the seasons and separate it down here in the south.
Absolutely.
I don't want to give up that October season because it is great for Woody's and Teal.
No question about it.
Sure.
What about, talk to me.
I have an English Sutter.
Kevin's got an English Sutter.
Grouse and Woodcock in central New York has become just a passion of ours alongside water
file hunting and dog training.
He and I took a trip to Michigan for Grouse and Woodcock.
So it's, it's definitely something I'd love to hear perspective on, you know, I feel like
most Grouse don't even give you a chance to be patient and wait for your shot.
It's like, man, you know, like, oh man, there it was.
I saw it for a flash.
Yeah.
So talk to me about how you're with someone and the dog and walking through woods and
teaching them about the cover, teaching them about the birds and how they react to dogs
and humans.
Well, real quickly, I just want to say that when it comes to dogs, I pretty much stick
to my comfort zone and what I grew up with.
My father was a hardcore waterfowler and upland was secondary to that and we had a place up
in the Brunswick, Canada in the 70s and early 80s on a Tavis and Tack Bay.
And what's interesting about the Tavis and Tack Bay, it's still the only place left in
North America where you're allowed to use legally sink boxes.
And I have a wonderful collection of, you know, cast iron brand decoys that we used to
put on the wings of those sink boxes.
Absolute miserable way to hunt, but deadly.
I mean, you're just, you're below the level of water and you're right in the middle of
your blocks and the brand and the big red leg blacks and the Canada's are lily coming
right down on top of you.
So I grew up with labs and I grew up using labs even in my upland.
And I found them to be very, very key in the Grouse and Woodcock woods for several reasons.
First of all, more importantly than finding the live bird is finding the dead bird and
there's no other dog that hunts dead better than a lab as far as I mean, it's for what
I've had experience with far better than setters, pointers, most dogs, even though this little
black and white short here I got now as a hell of a retriever, but he gets intimidated
by cover labs don't get intimidated by cover.
And they'll find that dead bird.
They'll find it if it was crap and it went into a hole in the stone wall.
They'll find it if it gets right in the middle of some serious brambles and Hawthorne.
So my comfort zone is around labs.
And so I've always hunted grouse and Woodcock with flushing dogs.
The second advantage to that is the Grouse, when walking in on a point, usually your buddies
get the better chance of the shot because they're out on the flank and you're walking
in on the point.
And that bird, I don't know if it's because of exhibitors like Sharpe Shinhocks and other
things, but they love to put a tree between you and them as quickly as possible.
Absolutely as quickly as possible.
And so with the flushing dog, with a lab or any other type of flushing dog that learns
very quickly and labs do this, how to hook and how to pin.
And then you start getting these birds that are quartering and then the windows of opportunity
on that bird are much, much bigger.
Cool.
I mean, I would 100% agree with you that their grouse knows how to get in between you and
a tree.
Yeah.
I mean, it's uncanny instinct for them to just pop out and be gone.
And they're just super challenging birds.
And we hunt with the setters.
So we're constantly figuring out where are my shooting lanes.
Dogs on point here, looking this way.
If I go this way, I may be in such a thick situation that I won't be able to do anything.
I've been lucky enough to nab some and then I've been lucky enough to see a lot fly away.
Yeah.
It's even become interesting with Woodcock.
And Woodcock are running.
Yeah.
Or you can call it running.
It doesn't look like running, but they are a lot more mobile on the ground than I can
remember as a youngster growing up shooting Woodcock where they set so incredibly tight
forever and ever and ever.
But now they're starting to be mobile on the ground too.
And it's almost that you have to readjust your pointer on Woodcock.
You know, it's always a readjust on grouse, but with Woodcock typically that never had
to happen.
But now you know, you're readjusting your pointers or, like I said in my case, I just
love the fact that the labs just know how to pin them and get them in the air.
Yeah.
So for the Northeast, talk to me about habitat in times of the year that you're finding
these birds in these habitats.
Well again, it's been changing from year to year.
It's a new learning.
You know, I, for many years, I thought I knew everything about these birds.
And now we have different conditions that's changed it.
Vermont doesn't have the cycles that we used to have.
I mean, you have to get up into the, you know, in the northern tier of New York or the northern
tier of Maine where you still have traditional grouse cycles.
But here we have really, really created an issue with our grouse population in many ways.
Obviously we don't have the habitat we used to.
We have 30 to 50 year growth is our common growth.
And that's the most sterile woods you can possibly have.
Though there is still some good grouse cover, but not enough of it to give us a population
of grouse that can withstand some of these disease issues of West Nile and mites on the
ticks and things of that nature.
You know, if we had the population we had back in the 70s, 80s and 90s, then they would
withstand these diseases and we still have plenty of birds.
But right now the cycles that we have are based on nesting, on conditions in the spring.
And that's what gives us a good year or not.
And then so we don't have consistency.
We don't have a cycle of several years where it's good and then a cycle of several years
where it's not due to the, you know, the birch cackens in the in the pop hole, you know,
and that type of sort of thing.
So it's a whole new learning experience as far as the grouse are concerned.
The Whitcock is, you know, darn well in the early season in October where to find them
and you're going to have several days of them.
And then it's waiting to see what kind of, you know, flights we had this year.
This year we had birds coming down in December and even early January long after our season.
And so we did the same.
We were the same in New York.
They were not here during the season.
Not in numbers.
No.
So it's constantly new learning.
You know, yeah, this new, these new weather conditions and these new habitats are forcing
us to regroup and relearn.
Sure.
You know, one of the things that I admire a lot about a good grouse and woodcock, maybe
not woodcock, but good grouse hunter.
And same with like a turkey hunter is the woodsmanship, the knowing what kind of trees
and berries and, you know, things like that.
So when I asked like, where are you typically finding them?
What are you looking for in the woods and in the, in the covers that are like this is
real grousy or?
Yeah.
No, I mean, the grouse is a very, very high energy bird and has to constantly feed, especially
as it gets colder.
And the food source has to get higher and higher in protein and fat as it gets colder.
So it's, you know, in the warmer days, you're going to find them in the damper areas and
they can live off of older leaves when it's warm.
They get enough protein, enough fat out of that as it gets colder, they're going to
shift out and find those fattier foods, whether it's a good year for Hawthorne apples or whether
it's they, that's a beach nut year.
And they'll literally go from all this up to higher elevations and into the legs and
the beach nuts.
And then they're going to be everywhere in between.
As long as they also have a few roosting pines nearby, but it changes with the temperature.
You're going to find them in the apple orchards.
You're going to find them in the aubers in the beginning in the warmer weathers and then
you've got to move into the nuts and the fattier foods.
I mean, you know, even when they get into apples, and you know, as well as I do that
really the only thing in the apple that's got any goodness to them is the seeds of the
apple, the meat of the apples, just nothing more candy.
And that's the reason why you see those apples chewed up in a lot of the chunks of the apple
are on the ground.
They're growing for the seed because that's the fat, that's the protein.
You know, Hagero is full of grapes has always been that's actually been more of a the past
20 years.
It's been more of a hunting grapes.
Of course, it's also living this lower elevation.
I'm living at 600 feet elevation now and I find it more in the grapes than I did when
I was living up at the 2000 foot elevation where we never did find them in grapes.
You find them in other things.
But the habitat will change with the temperature.
And that's what you got up.
That's what you got to look for.
What kind of temperature range are you thinking of like, all right, it's 20 degrees.
It's been 20 degrees for five days straight.
Let's go to this cover.
Yeah, no, once they start once you start getting a 20 degree as a high during the day.
Yeah, you got to be in the fatty or nutty or foods, the higher proteins, the higher fats.
But if it's have that type of day like in late October where it's very cool in the morning,
they got to feed in the morning when they first get off roost.
But then all of a sudden it warms up and they're just going to go relax somewhere.
They're going to go either collect some sun.
They're going to sit at the base of pines out of the sun if it's too hot or whatever,
but they don't need to eat all day.
But when you get to that 20 degree mark, they got to eat all day.
Yeah, yeah.
I just am picturing as you're talking like the different covers that we hit.
And I think my dog Andy is maybe six years old now.
So maybe seven, eight years ago is when I started learning grouse hunting.
And the first three years was like, let's throw something at the wall and see if it sticks.
And as we're learning the covers and learning the sections of woods that we're hunting here,
I'm starting to pick up more and more and more of where we're flushing them and what
is around me.
And then you start searching for that stuff.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, the old days nowadays you can do it easier.
Maybe you would take pictures or on the phone.
But we were dedicated at keeping our journals, putting the weather temperature.
I mean, where did we find the grouse today?
And then putting down the temperature and conditions and stuff like that.
I mean, that was a almost a must back in the early days.
So I don't see enough people do that today.
Is that something that you still do?
No, I can't say that I do.
But like I said, I'm not, I don't spend anywhere near the time in the woods for myself anymore.
I spend the, you know, in the old days, it was a ridiculous number of days.
Now it's, you know, a handful and it's usually with one of my clients.
I'm mostly, I'm mostly educating now, mostly teaching.
So the times in the woods have become not as much as it used to be, unfortunately.
But I don't keep, I don't keep the journals like I used to.
Let's talk a little bit about the job that you're doing.
You know, what you're doing with these clients to help them become better wing shooters.
Well, as I was saying before, what's been real interesting is this new shooter that I'm
working with.
In my game, I deal with the very, very high end guns, very, very high end clientele.
I mean, I, I sell six digit guns.
I got guys who spend a ridiculous amount of money during the bird season traveling and
making sure that they're having fun.
And it wasn't my cup of tea, but it was where, you know, it's where the money was.
And these guys wanted to shoot high volume and a lot.
And they wanted to look good.
They were going to buy a hollen, hollen or birdie.
They wanted to look good shooting.
They wanted to make sure that they cannot burst down.
So these are, these are my typical clients for many, many, many years.
And then I would set them up for trips to the UK or high volume dove and in, in Argentina
and stuff like that.
Now we have a new shooter who's also got plenty of money in his pocket and could do that type
of shooting, but really doesn't want to, they want, they want, they want, they're more of
a sponge.
They want to learn.
We, you know, we have a different person today.
And that's why, you know, a podcast like yours is so highly successful because people are
into learning.
And so now that the client that comes to me wants to learn how to shoot direct, right
methodology and also learn about why is the burden that cover.
Why does it, why is that the better dog for that type of bird hunting and so on and so
forth.
And a lot of guys now are coming to me saying, I want to buy, now you've got me this far.
It's time for me to buy a dog.
And I want you to show me how to use it.
So I don't show them how to train their dog.
What I'll do is all go out in the field and show them how to read their dog.
Because that's the thing.
They don't know how to read their dog.
They don't understand how the dog hunts differently upwind as it does downwind and things of that
nature and how to understand the dog and also make sure the dog understands that it's teamwork
and that the dog isn't just out there for themselves.
So that's my new client and it really brings me back to my roots and I'm really, really
enjoying it.
So that's why I'm saying I don't spend as much time in the woods as I used to because
I'm living vicariously through these guys and it's really, really a lot of fun teaching
this new shooter.
And I'm very excited about this new shooter.
They want to justify the kill.
They want to know how to dress the bird.
I had guys that used to just turn their back on the bird piles and walk away.
And now we got people who want to know how to cook the bird, how to dress the bird and
prepare the bird.
And so that's all part of it.
That's why I switched from Lars Jacob Wing shooting as my primary to wild surroundings.
Lars Jacob Wing shooting still exists and that's my primary, probably income is because
of my instructions and gun fittings.
But while surroundings takes it to the next level, it talks about recipes and it talks
about preparation and funny blogs and the whole bet.
It's very cool.
Yeah, it is a lot of fun.
Very cool.
Well, just to give you an idea of what's going on, when I first started coaching 30 plus
years ago, my student was an older gentleman who came to me who wanted to learn the right
methodology for whether it was past shooting on Duckard dove or whether it was escaping
targets like pheasant, grouse, woodcock, quail.
And they didn't have to learn safety.
They didn't have to learn etiquette.
That was something that was embedded into them because they grew up in a family of hunters.
And usually when I was done with that particular student, they would say, this was fantastic.
Next time I'm going to bring my son, he would love this too.
Now I have a 35 to 55 year old individual who didn't grow up in that world and is just
starting to learn how to shoot and they're seeing their buddies getting into it.
They want to do it and they come to me and they're not just learning the methodology,
but they're also learning the etiquette and the safety aspect of this.
And when they're done, they come and we say, this is great.
Next time I'm going to bring my father.
That's cool.
We lost that generation of shooter.
And that's why I'm very excited about this new shooter.
Though they need, there's more need for this education in the way we do it because they
don't have the upbringing that I'm not sure if you guys had it in your family for generations,
but I sure as heck did, you know,
Yeah, we did.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think I was four years old shooting learning how to shoot a 22, you know, pop in balloons
and shooting in milk jugs and watch the water pour out and how to be safe around them.
And it wasn't a toy.
So maybe a 35 or 40 year old, you know, from Boston who's never held a gun, shot a gun,
seen a gun, this is amazing.
That's right.
Yeah.
That's right.
So it's all good stuff.
Things before we got on the podcast that you started speaking to was the difference between
clay bird shooting and shooting on the wing.
And instructing is different.
And can you kind of dive deep into that and then how you educate these people?
Oh, absolutely.
You know, first of all, clay shooting is what a clay shooter does is he sees a presentation.
It's not unpredictable.
All right.
So he can make a plan and then he applies that plan.
So it's using the basically the analytical mind.
It will they'll take a presentation and break it up into sections.
It's going to be the focal point, the whole point, the break point.
And they understand their foot position and how they're going to unwind on a bird as opposed
to one on a bird.
It's all predictable.
And you have total control over the bird doesn't fly until you call poll.
So it's it's it's it's they'll even visualize that break in their hunt and their head three
or four times before they actually call poll.
The bird hunter doesn't have that ability.
He has to analyze or he has to read that target, so to speak, while it's in the air.
So it's more of having a belief in your instinctive thought process, okay, and not letting the
analytical mind interfere.
Okay, have total belief have total faith with it all comes together.
You squeeze the cricketer when they lose and the chances are the winds become more and
more common.
If you let that conscious mind jump in, then all of a sudden the loses become more common.
So that's the first thing you got to understand that they have to really believe in their
instincts.
This is like hitting a baseball.
Okay, that baseball batter has got to analyze that picture 99 miles an hour and which corner
of the box is going to come through in a very quick period of time.
We have that ability.
There isn't a bird out there that flies quicker than our instinctive thought process works.
So we got to combine that with proper mechanics.
Now the mechanics is something that's easy to learn.
It just takes time because it is muscle, whereas the focus and the belief in the instinctive
thought process is not.
That's what you have to constantly remind yourself of.
But the the wing shooting methodology is one of very, very efficient reaction to the under
predictable presentation.
There's a lot more body and gun movement in wing shooting than there is in clay shooting.
The clay shooter, now you're seeing these barrels getting longer and longer and longer
in clay shooting.
And the reason is is they're minimizing their movement more and more and more to the point
where it's very, very small amount of movement.
So if you have a very small amount of movement, you don't have muscle speed that's going to
give you the forward allowance on the target that's needed.
So they have to perceive a lead.
They have to picture a lead.
So it's all geometry when the longer the barrel is, it shortens that lead perception.
If I take a 28 inch barrel on a sporting clay course and it's throwing a 45 yard hard
crossing target, I'm probably going to have to see six or eight feet in front of that
bird to break it.
I can take that same presentation, bring out my 32 inch barrel gun, and I'm going to
cut that lead perception in half.
All because of geometry.
So that's the reason why you've seen these longer barrels in the clay's world.
So in the bird hunting world, we have to use more of a body movement and muscle speed
to give us a forward allowance.
There's less awareness of the gun barrel than there is for the clay shooter.
We have a lot to do, but it's all done at the same time.
That's the thing.
We don't move in segments.
We don't mount the gun and then go try to acquire the target.
You maintain a connection to that target, particularly with a hand on the forestock,
because a hand on the forestock is what relays that information to your instinctive mind.
So that by the time you hit your cheek, you know everything about that grouse that would
cock that quail.
You don't need to then figure them out.
You already know everything about them.
So all you do is accelerate and squeeze your trigger.
Because wing shooting is a game of acceleration, not deceleration.
Clay's is more of a game of literally spot shooting.
It's very, very, very difficult.
So what are some of the mechanics that you will work on with these folks?
I teach a very English philosophy.
So it's an extremely comfortable, somewhat upright stance.
What I say is make it look more like an art than a sport.
But it is a sport.
So enough of a sport where you do have to play it off your toes, like any other sport
you've ever played, you lose if you're on your heels.
So there's that small extension.
But it's very, very important for them to understand that whatever movement you make
needs to be very small and compact because it gets bigger downrange.
So if you make big movements at the body, which you see a lot of shooters do, self-taught
shooters do, you're going to see huge movements downrange.
And typically that lends itself to a miss.
So you've got to understand that making, you know, the way I tell people is when you
sight in that 22 with iron sights and you move that rear sight, how little do you have
to move that rear sight to make it a big difference at 35, 40, 55 yards, right?
It's very little movement makes inches and inches of difference downrange.
And it's the same thing at the body when you're shotgunning.
If I tell them as an instructor, this is the correction I want you to make, but don't
overcompensate, take it in very small minute amounts and you're going to see big differences
downrange.
Very difficult for the wing shooter to understand that the correction that they made is actually
working.
Because it's black and white, the target brakes are a dozen.
So there's so many other sports out there that give you feedback.
If you're fly casting, okay, and you let go of that line too soon and it piles up in
front of you, you realize that's a lousy cast.
And then the instructor says, well, you need to let that rod get in front of you and stop
and went just as it recovers from the bend.
That's when you release that line and he applies it and he's still not quite exact, but it
did get a better cast.
He can see progression there.
He can see feedback and in shotgunning, it's very, very difficult.
If I have someone that gets in front of me and he misses a target and I make a suggestion
and then we throw the target again and he applies that, but he still misses the target.
I said much, much better.
And he says he doesn't understand because they were both misses.
So in wing shooting, the learning process isn't going to be you break two out of 10
and then you break four out of 10 and then six out of 10, then finally eight or 10 out
of 10.
You're going to break two out of 10, two out of 10, two out of 10, and then finally you're
going to break eight out of 10.
The instructor sees the four and the six.
And that's probably the reason why for years and years and years, nobody thought that shotgunning
could be taught like any other sport, but it can't.
It can be taught and learned as Robert Churchill said.
But the reason why that thought that it couldn't be is because of the lack of feedback that
the student was getting.
Sure.
I've got to find it difficult due to bird numbers.
Like if we had you come out and home and me and cabin, it'd be like, well, we heard three
flushes we saw to and what a great day in the field.
Right?
Like you might not even have squeezed the trigger.
Is it different up where you are where you do get the ability and the chance to get more
reps on the grouse with these folks?
Oh, no, no, no.
I can't, unfortunately, we can't use wild birds that much for learning experience.
Okay.
I mean, the only time that I could actually do that where you have consistent presentation
on wild birds would be Argentina.
Yeah, right.
I mean, the high volume of wild birds up here.
So this is where, you know, I will say that I am all for fessentries.
I'm not all form where it's a group of guys that just go there and not want it to better
themselves, but just have an incredibly high volume amount of fun for just a couple of
hours and then go back to the city.
I'm talking about for the learning experience.
We need fessentries these days to get a tower shoot or a walk up on it.
Walk up on it.
Walk up on it on on subsidized birds birds that have been released in the field.
Gotcha.
Because it's things like that.
And like I said, I do most of my instruction is with, I have a clay score set my shooting
grounds, but the presentations don't have these bizarre sporting clay presentations
that you would never see in the wild.
They're all to represent classic bird hunting scenarios.
And I teach people bird hunting methodology on those clay targets.
I mean, I'm the type of person that if they break a target and I said, yeah, you broke
a beat and break it the way I wanted to break it because you already knew where that bird
was going.
All right.
So let's really work on this target like you don't know.
And then you then you go into the unpredictable presentations or throwing different traps or
having, you know, I have a setup with several wobble traps.
But then the field is your next bet.
But you got to have enough birds to make it worthwhile to learn.
In the field, it isn't just so much how they're going to then take what I taught them in the
clay's course or on my clay instructional area and then apply it in the field.
It's also some other things.
Re-addressing the bird.
I mean, how many times is somebody when the bird flushes, they are beading running into
their gun mount and winding themselves up because it was a hooked bird like a corkscrew
going into the ground and they look like they're about to fall over and then they take the
shot and miss.
They don't realize that there's this tremendous ability to re-address the bird as that bird
flushes.
You can take the time as long as the steps that you make or the way you dance with the
bird with your feet, long as you keep your stance close and everything that you make for
movement is within side the width of your shoulders, you can easily come to a ready position
and address that bird and you'll have plenty of time to take that bird.
Grouse, because of its habitat, might be the most difficult to do that but it can be done.
I teach a Churchill footwork methodology that does help with the grouse but with FES it,
you can actually take my new little steps and stay within your little hula hoop, so to speak,
so you don't lose your balance, you don't get off your foundation and then apply a move
mount and shoot sequence where the instinctive mind is absorbing that information because
of the forehand on the stock is pointing at the bird while you're mounting the gun.
So these are the things that I teach in the field is how to re-address birds, how to
reposition themselves to give them the better advantage.
Don't think that all birds are going to turn you into a corkscrew, it isn't, that is the
way it works.
You know, truth of the matter is, if it lived in the same terrain as a FES it, you could
smoke them all day long because their top speed is not even close to a FES it or not even
close to a Bob White Quill, wild Bob White Quill.
Because of their habitat, it makes them extreme and their weariness, that's what makes them
a difficult bird.
Yeah, they're one of my favorites.
I mean, I know I said it earlier, but like just you saying, it just gets me fired up.
Yeah, I mean, we've done plenty of, in New York State they release FES and on Stateland
and one of my favorite things to do when I got in this game was take my, he's now 13
year old lab and after working and I would go push a field and shoot our limit of FES
and go home at dark and I find that that, I don't want to say like, it's not as fun for
me anymore, but the challenge of the grouse and the excitement of the non-volume, right?
Like the, it's kind of weird to put into terms, but if you get a few points, if you see a
few birds, if you get to pull the trigger, that's a great day.
If you get a bird or two birds or three birds, you're like, I'm on fire and this was the
greatest day of the season.
Where the FES and you know, I would love to go and do it with my dad and Kevin or a
couple buddies and but the challenge of it isn't there as much, I guess.
I've also not been to like the Dakotas.
Right, well, that's a completely different bird, that's for sure.
And it applies a little bit of a different methodology.
When we shoot grouse in Woodcock, basically as we are using the Robert Churchill instinctive
method in its purest form, you're basically, when you acquire the grouse with your eyes
and then you connect to the grouse with your left hand, regardless if there's trees or
not, you, the mindset is are no trees.
I wrote an article about that, there are no trees.
You look through the woods as the elk hunters would say and you're moving in finding that
line, the focus is entirely on the bird, your peripheral vision, your subconscious vision
is awareness of the trees.
But when you just before you hit the cheek, you accelerate the gun to slightly in front
of that bird and squeeze trigger.
That's, that's Churchill instinctive in its purest form.
When you're out in the Dakotas and you're shooting FES and the beginning of the sequence
is the same, but because of the distance of that FES and the speed of that FES, we have
to create forward allowance with a little bit more acceleration.
So that's when we apply a real refined swing through technique called buck belly beak bang.
That's when you get on the butt end of that bird.
So when you're moving in harmony with that bird, while you're coming to your cheek,
as soon as you cheat, you accelerate through the buck belly beak and then force yourself
to get in front of that bird and squeeze your trigger.
So you're creating that acceleration needed for FES, but at the same time, you're finding
the line that the FES in is on.
And that is more difficult to find than forward allowance.
Because what you're throwing out there as far as a pattern is less forgiving up and down
to a line of a target than it is whether you're in front, you can be in front many different
places and still kill that bird.
But your, your diameter of your pattern is less forgiving of not finding the line.
So if you just poke out in front, you may have found the perfect forward allowance, a perfect
lean on that bird, but still miss it because he didn't find the path that it was taken.
And that's, that's, that's FES in hunting in the Dakotas.
So it's all these methodologies are based on instinctive, but then, you know, you apply
them what you need.
The duck hunter or the driven bird shooter is going to apply more of a pull away technique.
And those guys also are ones where I really work on the shoulders because people don't
realize that on a quartering bird that you would typically see in a driven scenario or
in a duck hunting scenario or duck hunting scenario, a duck hunting scenario.
You, the muzzle follows a line between shoulder point to shoulder point.
That's the swing line.
And that swing line has, has to match the line that the bird is flying on.
So learning how to drop, if it's a, if it's a quartering bird is coming at you right to
left, you gotta learn to drop that right shoulder as you start your move mount sequence.
If it's coming quartering left to right, then you gotta drop the left shoulder as you do
your move mount sequence.
You know, these are, that's, that allows you to find the path that the bird is on when
it's a type of bird like a duck, a dove or, or driven bird that requires considerable
forward allowance.
So cool.
I would like to, we need to come up and hang out with you.
Another passion of mine is talking guns.
So I'll kind of give you my, what, what I've got just so, you know, we're on the same
page.
And I'd like to hear some of your relics that you enjoy.
So a gift that has never been shot is a Charles Daly, 10 gauge Damascus barrel side by side.
Those my great grandfathers.
Was it Prussian?
Was it German or Prussian?
I don't know the answer.
I have the paperwork for it.
So I'd have to look at it again.
But it's just a beautiful.
I think the pictures of the proof marks would show it to me if he had, you know, but Charles
Daly was an importer in Boston in the late 1880s is when he started.
And his first guns that he brought in were, you know, Prussian guns because it's before
World War I.
And something, the lender and a few other companies in Prussia that made some of the
most spectacular guns that time highly sought after collectibles today since that era was
short lived because of World War I.
And then Charles Daly was long gone after that.
But then he started, you know, the important company then started bringing in Italian guns,
English guns, Japanese guns over the years.
And they're all very, very nice.
But I got a feeling when you're talking about that era of gun and a 10 gauge, I got a feeling
that it could be German or Prussian or something of that nation.
Yeah, I'll have to take a picture of it and send it to you.
It's a beautiful gun and just a great keepsake for our family.
I was gifted by a client, a 16 gauge Ithaca from the 50s that it's like a three barrel
set.
So 26 inch, 28 inch and 32 or 30, something to that effect.
And that's been my grouse gun for the last two seasons.
Been very fun.
Nice.
Good.
Yep.
Amongst a bunch of others, but then my go to gun is a browning, satori, 12 gauge that's
dented, dinged, bent rib, scratched up.
And that's what I duck hunt goose hunt.
Really, I'll take that into the grouse woods too, just because I love it and swing it well.
But that's, like I said, I've got a few others, but those are the ones that have my heart.
Yeah.
Yeah, the companies, what's interesting about manufacturers is they all had a different
philosophy of who Mr. Average was.
So browning always had a tendency to build guns more drop at the comb and the heel than
some other companies.
Beretta keeps their guns relatively flat.
So when I do fittings, and it isn't somebody who's going to have a spoke gun made for them,
or maybe not really thinking about having their stock altered, but just trying to get
an idea of what their dimensions should be.
What I do is I say, listen, only go to a store, a gun room store that has the labels on them
that actually talks about the dimensions of the stock.
And after I fit them, I say, here are your dimensions.
Well, if you can find something as close to these, you're going to be a fine shot and
you'll learn proper technique because the dimensions will allow that to happen.
And so a lot of times after I fit somebody, I'll say to them, after they're fitting, I
say you would do well with the browning, or you would do well with the Beretta because
your dimensions came out closer to what Beretta thinks is what Mr. Average is, or this guy's
dimensions came out closer to what Browning thinks Mr. Average is.
So it's kind of an interesting.
But typically when you find that gun that you shoot well, it's typically because it
is closest to your dimensions.
It just makes the most sense to your eyes.
Gun fitting is probably more important for the wing shooter than it is any other shooter
because of the fact that we have to move efficiently in any direction that the bird might take
us.
So we have a tendency to stand more square and our head more upright so that we can fully
acquire the target, fully acquire the bird.
So a proper fit gun can really be beneficial.
That said, it's only beneficial if you apply proper technique.
If you are fitted for a gun and you build that gun to those dimensions but you haven't
learned proper technique, then you're still going to be a lousy shot just with a well-fitted
gun.
So it's the combination of all these that make you the best shot you can possibly be.
So that's where the browning comes in.
The browning is better for someone that has a higher head carriage because they are typically
one in five eighths at the comb, two in three eighths at the heel or two and a half at the
heel.
Whereas, bread might be one in three eighths at the comb and two nates at the heel.
So that has a lot to do it.
So when we do fittings, it isn't just based around the physical dimensions.
In other words, distance from pupil to cheekbone, distance from ear lobe to shoulder, slope
of shoulder, square shoulder, all these things come into the play physically of how you fit
just like you would looking for your shirt or your jacket.
But it also takes into consideration your eyes.
We talk about eye dominance and obviously, if possible, it's always best to shoot with
both eyes open because it gives you field of vision, a deaf perception.
But there's some people that maybe can't.
There's a lot of very good one-eyed shots out there.
But it isn't just everyone has a misconception that eye dominance is either it's going to
be this eye, the right eye or the left eye.
There's many places in between that the two lines of sight can converge.
And many times I'll do a fitting for a bird hunter and he comes to me and I say, okay,
let's go through the side-downness test.
And his two lines of sight are converging closer to the bridge of the nose than it is
in front of one eye.
And in which case, I can actually fit a stock to that.
I can make it so it lines up.
Your eye may not be center of the rib, but your lines of sight where the two come together
are center of the rib.
So when I find someone like that, I'll tell them right out straight.
I said, I bet you have a ridiculously hard time with that absolute straightaway bird.
That bird for some reason, you just think you can't seem to hit that straightaway bird.
You smoke the crossing and quartering birds.
And I say, yeah, that's exactly right.
And that all has to do with that visual alignment.
So that's all part of the gun fitting process as well.
That's unbelievable.
So since Kevin can't hit a bird at all, what would you say?
I knew it was coming.
He had a...
I was letting it marinate, baby.
Yeah, no, I know.
Sorry, you had a grin on your face.
I knew it was coming.
What I find so interesting, Lars, is that there's such a deep science to it where you
could just go out and go for a walk in the woods and stumble upon a bird and take a
crack and go out bird hunting, but you can also fall in love with it and learn about
what the bird is eating and the temperature and where it is and that kind of a day and
what type of gun you're holding and why and how your face dimensions are and all these
different things.
There's so many different layers to it.
It's exciting and it's cool that...
It's such an expertise.
Yeah, I haven't even said anything in this whole show.
I've just been enjoying listening to you talk about it because I think it's really interesting
to hear someone who has as much experience as you do with this that I don't know if
I'll ever get to that point, but it's incredible.
I'll be honest with you, I'll be very fortunate that I actually, when I decided to make this
more of my profession, I went to Orvis, which is in my backyard, and I grew up as an Orvis
brat.
It was just down the road, so I knew the Perkins family very well.
I bought their stuff in the whole bit and I started working for them in...
Right around 1990 or so.
Ended up becoming their chief fitter, their chief instructor, managing their custom gun
program.
What that did for me is it isn't how many years that you maybe have done this because
there's many other people that have been in this business for a long period of time, but
maybe don't have the opportunity to have seen as many students in front of them per year.
I have.
When I first started Orvis, there wasn't too many other school type schools around, wing
shooting schools around.
I was getting 300, 400 people a year in front of me.
That's a lot of seeing experience because the truth of the matter is that you can't rely
on a textbook for teaching someone how to shoot or fitting because there's so many quirks and
nuances with people that you can't fit them.
There isn't enough textbooks out there to fit them.
So you've got to take it from experience.
If I have someone shooting high and a pattern plate when I'm doing a gun fitting, and yet
when I look down the barrel, the pupil is literally right on top of the rib.
It's not sticking over the top of the rib, which is what typically would make that point
of impact be high.
That's because that individual is not doing what textbook says.
Textbook says, if your pupil is too high, the muzzle is coming up to your pupil, but
the brakes of the gun is below.
So now you have a line of sight that's flat, but a gun barrel is angled up, shoot over
the top of the bird.
Some people don't have the muzzle come up to their eye.
Some people will run always the gun parallel.
So I can actually have a guy shooting high on the point of impact on the pattern plate.
And another guy shooting low on the point of impact on the pattern plate, but the fix
is the same because they have two different, one is a textbook situation, the other one's
a quirk that you've rarely ever seen before.
So it takes experience.
Lots and lots of different people because there is a lot of variety out there with people
in their eyes, their athleticism, their head care, their upper body strength.
All this also comes into play when teaching and fitting.
Let's talk about your guns a little bit.
Like what do you like to carry?
What's your go-to gun?
If we're going out into the field to have a good fun day, what are you taking?
It's always a side-by-side.
It will always be a side-by-side only because they are not just little sexy little guns
that you think what a proper field gun should be.
And don't get me wrong, I love shooting all kinds of guns.
Actually my second favorite of pumps because the pump was the American classic as far as
I'm concerned.
The side-by-side is the English or the UK classic.
The other thing is that there is a lot of attributes to the side-by-side that lend itself
to upland bird hunting.
And one is obviously ease of carry.
They're much lighter than in the same gauge as they're over and under counterpart.
And they also align when you're shooting instinctively, you're basically acquiring the bird and throwing
your two hands up into your line of sight.
So if you utilize a side-by-side that has a straight hand stock and a splinter forend,
you have a configuration that keeps those hands in alignment.
The barrels are very, very close to the palm of your hand.
So it has better pointability than any other configuration because it goes in play with
the fact that you're throwing those two hands into your line of sight.
Whereas over and under is pushed the barrels up out of your hand with those bigger, bigger
forends and the pistol grips stagger the hands.
So they don't have the same pointability in my mind.
They don't have the same responsiveness.
You want in the field, you want a gun that points quick and responds quick to what you
see.
A clay shooter on the other hand wants, or even maybe a waterfall hundred because of today's
non-toxic loads that are belting out at 1,450 or 1,550 feet per second, you need to tame
that load.
So these high volume big gauge shooters want that pistol grip so that the wrist is straight
behind the hand instead of cocked which allows you to absorb recoil as well as gives you
better control over the gun.
But they don't need a pointability gun.
They don't need a responsive gun because they already know where the target is going.
It's a plant, they apply it.
So all of the guns have reasons for being and have their attributes.
But being an upland bird shooter, there's no question that the side by side is probably
the best pointing gun that there is.
You've got a cat in the house.
Yeah.
I can't control the units.
Jen's trying to deal with the dogs and the cat.
Sorry about that.
So what is the gun, like what make model gauge?
Well, you know, okay, I'm a little bit of a snob here.
There was no guns better built than the ones built pre-war 1920s, 1930s and the next better
guns that were ever built were probably in the late 1880s to about 1910.
Those were the very, very best decades of gun making.
There was no better.
Everything was done in-house.
Everything was done, you know, it was during a time where I want the best, where today is,
I want the best, but I want it tomorrow.
You know, it's a whole different attitude.
And we don't have, they didn't have CNC.
It was, you know, hand fitting and everything like that.
Hand engraving.
I'm honest with you, there's some guns for sale out there today made in the UK that you
can pick up for very little money.
I mean, you can pick up many different 12 boards out there for $1,500, $1,400 that were made
in the 1920s or 1930s that if you were to make them the same way they were made today,
would be five digit guns.
They'd be $1,520,000 guns because they can't make them today like that anymore with that
same attention to detail.
And when I mean by attention to detail, it's not just what you see on the outside.
In the older vintage guns pre-war, when you looked at the, took them apart to look at
the proof marks and the barrel flats, typically the barrel was choked, we'll just say choke.
And if the other barrel didn't say choke at all, that means there was probably, there
was no more than, there was less than 10,000s constriction, okay?
And what they did is they just went out, they didn't call their improved modified, modified
full and all this stuff.
They went out to a pattern board and they shot and then they honed and then they shot
and then they honed until they got the pattern that they wanted, at the distance they wanted.
And if it had more than 10,000s constriction, then there would be stamped choke at the proof
house.
It was less, it wouldn't be.
And so that didn't matter with those type of choke.
These guns patterned magnificently that in a tighter choke gun, the forcing cones going
into the choke constriction would start six, seven, eight inches back from the muzzle.
So it was a small gradual squeeze of the shot.
These guns just plain outperform.
And then we, unfortunately, we destroyed our guns because the American mentality was,
if I missed something, I need a bigger gun.
And we started loading these guns with huge charges, okay?
And now that we had the lawyer proof these guns, we have to say, okay, this guy might
put an answer three quarter load in his gun.
So we have to know that it can withstand twice that.
All right.
So to withstand twice that, we have to build these wall thicknesses at 40, 45,000s at the
thinnest on a barrel.
Whereas back then they were making them 19,000s, okay?
No one could strike barrels better than the Brits.
And actually the very best guns with the Scottish guns with that arrow.
But so we've turned our guns into boat anchors.
We had these beautiful lively little guns that pointed with extreme speed and accuracy.
And we destroyed them by making them want to shoot bigger loads.
When someone comes to me, this is a pet peeve of mine, as you can tell.
All right.
When someone comes up to me and they say, you won't believe it, but I was killing Feds
and stone dead in the air at 40 yards of my 28 gauge.
I said, really, what was the load you're using?
Oh, I'm using these, these 1300 feet per second, one ounce loads from Filki.
I said, you're not shooting a 28 gauge.
It's the charge that makes the gauge.
It's the shell.
It's the load.
You're shooting if you're shooting a one ounce load in a 28 gauge, you're actually shooting
a 16 gauge gun through a 550,000s bore diameter.
And yet that one ounce load performed so much better in a 662,000s bore diameter, which
is a 16 gauge gun.
So why do that?
You need to shoot a one ounce load.
You shoot a 16 gauge.
The reason why you're shooting a 28 gauge is because you want the gun that performs absolute
best with a three quarter ounce load or less.
All these shotguns will shoot at their top load and lower extremely well.
But at their top load and higher, then you start losing pattern ability.
You start creating strings, you start creating gaps, holes.
And you know, I always tell people if you take a handful of small pebbles and you'll
wing them as hard as you can, they disperse immediately.
But if you take that same small handful of pebbles and just gently toss them, you know,
all stay together.
And that's what we've been doing to our shotgun shows.
The English and the Scots were killing Fessin stone dead in the air with three quarter ounce
loads and a two inch 12 gauge can going a thousand fifty for generations.
We didn't have to make it hotter, faster and more lethal.
That's crazy and makes a ton of sense.
So the Scottish guns, I'm going to tell you that, you know, like John Dixon son and and
Alex Henry and Daniel Frazier and Charles Ingram, all these wonderful, wonderful Scottish makers
during the twenties and thirties by far were the best guns ever made.
Is that what you carry in the field?
As much as I can.
Unfortunately, I'm not one that can have a boatload of guns.
Sure.
I'm one of those collectors that shoots one and then sells it and then finds another one
to shoot.
So that's cool though.
That's really cool.
Well I would like to invite you to tell everyone where they can find you.
If they want to take a course and maybe Kevin and I will hit you up this summer and take
a lesson.
You're not that far from us.
That's like, no, you're not.
It's like three and a half hours, four hours, maybe.
No, you're not at all.
And it's real pretty up there in the Champlain Valley too.
Yeah, no, my website, there's two of them.
There's wild surroundings.com.
And then you can also go largejacob.com.
And both of them will actually take you.
Largejacob.com will take you to the Lars Jacob Wing shooting page of my Wild Surroundings
website, Orange Generals.
And then of course it's at Wild Surroundings on Facebook, at Wild Surroundings on Instagram.
And if you Google Lars Jacob, you'll see me for several pages.
So not too difficult to find.
Very cool.
And in the description of the podcast, we'll be links to your pages so that everyone makes
it easier on them to find you.
And I know that you said that you'd travel around and give courses all over the place
too.
But where in Vermont are you again?
Yeah, my shooting grounds is in Schornvermont.
It's at Peaceable Hill Farm in Schornvermont.
And you can find Peaceable Hill Farm at Peaceable Hill.com.
And it's a real nice beautiful little fessing tree where I have my instructional station
of clays.
But also we have we plant for sorghum and corn and swish grass.
And we have a wonderful, wonderful, some wonderful fessing hunting.
I do do drivens up there.
I do continentals up there.
But I also do my live bird instruction out in the field.
We have a good stable of dogs.
Everything from Bronco Italianos to English setters.
The Bronco Italianos seems to be the new thing these days.
It does.
But it's in Schornvermont in Lake Champlain Valley.
Beautiful.
Thank you so much for joining us this evening.
It was a pleasure getting to know you and learn from you.
And I hope that you enjoyed it as well.
Thank you so much.
Oh, absolutely.
A lot of fun guys.
I love to talk with you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
a lot of fun.