Why I shoot Benelli shotguns

Best friends are usually the most reliable. Saying good bye to an old friend is never easy. In this instance, that old reliable friend was a fail-proof Benelli M-1 Super 90. Shotguns are tools, like hammers that goes boom, boom, boom. Funny how we can become attached to inanimate objects like that.

Purchased in 2000 or 2001 for my first trip ever to Argentina, before the inception of GetDucks.com, it was chosen for its rumored reliability. That was back in the day that magellan and ashy-headed geese could still be hunted, and we put a beating on them as they decoyed at the crack of dawn. Ducks and doves were also in great abundance. That week sparked love affairs with the Benelli and with Argentina. They've not ended in the nearly two decades since, and I'll surely go the grave with them.

Other makes and models of shotguns find home our small gun safe, several of them other Benellis. But that M-1 Super 90 was the one. It became the go-to gun. Everything seemed right with the world when shooting it. It seemed to fit better and, though I miss equally well with any shotgun, it sure felt like hit-to-miss percentages improved when swinging the little M-1. It eventually became a reliable tool of the trade, as integral to our growing wingshooting consultancy business as a calculator and sharpened pencil to an accountant.

Where many hunt a couple dozen times per year, I've spent as many as 225 in duck blinds around the world. It's just what I do. To include my own, I've shot Benelli shotguns on 5 continents and a dozen countries. Firearm import laws and sometimes just simple logistics precluded my taking it everywhere, but I sure wanted to. I used the M-1 for doves, ducks, geese, cranes, and occasionally quail, rabbits, squirrels and turkeys.  Gunning for waterfowl in four flyways and 25 states across the US the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, my confidence was unbridled and carrying a back-up gun became an obsolete notion.

On 20 some-odd trips to Argentina and Uruguay, sometimes for as long 8 consecutive weeks, that M-1was used to bag numbers of geese, ducks, doves, pigeons, perdiz, and more that harken the early 1900s in the US.  Countless trips to Mexico for ducks, brant, white-winged doves, and quail, and a trip to Pakistan, where I achieved my personal record number of ducks in a single day, added to the cumulative shell count.

We're really pretty spoiled here in the United States when it comes to ammo quality. Tolerances are high, quality is consistently good. The same can't be said for South America. Ammo quality varies from brand to brand, and from year to year within brand. Light loads are the norm, and powder quality varies from decent to atrocious. Where gas-operated guns malfunction or fail to consistently cycle such ammo, Benellis generally eat them as readily as teens eat Captain Crunch for breakfast. And I cleaned and oiled that M-1 once or twice per year whether it needed it or not. Sometimes more.

It's not always possible to stop a hunt to clean it. The birds won't fly forever. Or maybe you're just hunting a remote area where improvising is required to keep shooting. That's where that M-1 shined.  Excessive gun powder? Lube it and clean later. No lube handy? A little mud in the action? Rinse the action with water you're standing in, reassemble, and keep shooting.

Somewhere along the way the paint began to wear. A couple sessions with non paint-safe gun cleaning solutions didn't help. It looked, as one client commented before a Texas blue-winged teal hunt, like it'd been dragged down every gravel road around the world. It shot fine and I accepted it's cosmetics like battle-earned scars.

It seems like we all go through periods where small-bore handicaps, local hunting etiquettes or something, compel us to own or to shoot something else. I tried. But like grandad's old pocket knife, a favorite pair of boots or that once-in-a-lifetime retriever, that Benelli was proven beyond the pale. As for handicaps, the goal is dead birds and I've become increasingly practical after passing the half-century mark, and as for putting on airs I guess we eventually learn to be true to ourselves. Dead ducks all the same.

A very close friend and I share a hunt or two each season. The fabled cypress brake is nothing short of holy waters. They all shoot over-unders. We usually hunt over "the pretties" as he calls them, a combination of cork decoys from our respective sheds. I tried the whole over-under thing but when I "accidentally" showed up with the Benelli M-1, he just laughed, commented how I always seemed naked without a Benelli, and quickly added, "and that's a bad thing."

After nearly 2 decades and countless rounds of fail-proof service, the little M-1 gave it up last season in Mexico. It still cycled fine, as long as I didn't take it to the plug, but the receiver was worn beyond practical use. With an important trip to Argentina a few weeks away, I quickly replaced it with a Benelli Super Black Eagle 3. It felt as familiar as my own pillow right out of the box. And that's a good thing.

Ramsey Russell  is a certified  wildlife biologist.  He owns and operates GetDucks.com, a full-time, full-service agency specializing in world-wide trophy duck species and epic wingshooting adventures.  Exploring the world's wetlands for the best client duck hunting experiences is a life mission, but hunting in Mississippi with family and friends, he says, is top priority when home.  It’s always duck season somewhere.

Argentina duck species

Duck hunting in Argentina is an epic shotgunning vacation, especially when hunting at the right place - not all Argentina duck hunts are created equal.  Relative to duck hunting in the U.S., bag limits are generous, and then there's the whole South American duck camp experience - steaks as thick as cinder blocks, malbec wines, Spanish accents, the works; the new hunting environment, sights and sounds.  But for our many clients, mostly it's all about the ducks; the rest just comes with the territory.

To some hunters, it's more about numbers, limits. Most hunters appreciate the diversity of new duck species in Argentina.  There are about a dozen duck species commonly encountered while duck hunting in Argentina. A few other species are less common.  Argentina is a very big country, too.  Some species are more abundant in some regions, and others have a fidelity to specific habitats.  Brazilian ducks and ringed-teal, for example, may be taken throughout Argentina but predominate the bag in some northern areas; black-headed ducks are usually going to screech over the decoys at Mach 3 when hunting sizable marshes with large patches of open water.

Everyone asks if we're hunting the same species as here in the States. No.  Some are very similar, do not migrate across the equator and have established separate breeding populations. An interesting thing about Argentina ducks is that many exhibit a continuous molt pattern.  Unlike here in North America, where our ducks molt twice annually, most look exactly the same throughout the year.  It's possible that this is because they have such extensive breeding seasons. In good, wet years, they've been known to have 2-3 clutches during the year.

Rosy-billed pochards are to Argentina duck hunting what mallards are to U.S. duck hunting. Large and gregarious, they decoy readily. If I had to choose a single duck to hunt outside the United States, it'd be the rosy-bills in Argentina, and nobody but nobody flat out OWNS them like our long-time outfitter at our most popular Argentina duck hunt Las Flores, but I digress. Rosybills do that to me.

In addition to rosy-billed pochards, other common Argentina ducks include speckled teal, silver teal, cinnamon teal, ringed-teal, Brazilian duck, Chiloe wigeon, red shoveler, white-faced whistling duck, fulvous whistling duck, yellow-billed pintail and white-cheeked pintail.  Other far less common species include masked ducks, knob-billed ducks and even blue-winged teal. We've encountered all of the species during a single week hunting at our Rio Salado Argentina duck hunt destination.

For more information, we've posted video discussions here: Argentina Duck Species.

Ramsey Russell  is a certified  wildlife biologist.  He owns and operates GetDucks.com, a full-time, full-service agency specializing in world-wide trophy duck species and epic wingshooting adventures.  Exploring the world's wetlands for the best client duck hunting experiences is a life mission, but hunting in Mississippi with family and friends, he says, is top priority when home.  It’s always duck season somewhere.

"The mallard of Argentina"

Argentina was love at first sight in 2001.  I've since nurtured that romance, visiting dozens of times for as long as 2 months while scouting for the next great destination, revisiting dependably excellent lodges we've represented for years. Argentina's duck species are an impressive collection of teals, pintails, wigeon, shoveler and more. First-time clients rightfully want to get their hands on each of the dozen or so species available, and at the right place at the right time that's easily enough accomplished.

But for many, the rosy-billed pochard steals the show. Especially from the old salts that have been to Argentina many times, the most commonly asked question about any particular Argentina duck hunting venue is, "When is the best rosy-bill shooting?"  Eventually, the novelty of new, colorful species wears off like the shine on a new nickel. What remains is the pure heartbeat of duck hunting.  Rosy-bills are large, fast, agile, abundant, delicious - and above all, they love to decoy. For those reasons, they're often called "the mallards of Argentina."

Ramsey Russell  is a certified  wildlife biologist.  He owns and operates GetDucks.com, a full-time, full-service agency specializing in world-wide trophy duck species and epic wingshooting adventures.  Exploring the world's wetlands for the best client duck hunting experiences is a life mission, but hunting in Mississippi with family and friends, he says, is top priority when home.  It’s always duck season somewhere.

My favorite duck?

My favorite duck? Easy. The next one.

No bird collector, I've managed to scratch off over 100 species and subspecies of worldwide waterfowl.  The hunting experiences, the memories, are all that are personally collected.

In the US, September blue-wings are like a kryptonite. Maybe it's just a timing thing - Fall finally hanging in the air like Spanish moss on live oaks - but I hunt blue-winged teal every morning possible.  Watching many thousands of them come off one of Steve Bigger's roosts one morning near El Campo (see this link Texas duck hunting guides for info ), where they filled the entire morning sky as we set decoys, was truly one of the greatest spectacles I can recall from many worldwide events.  "Don't let his excitement fool you," my buddy Mike Morgan told Steve, "Ramsey likes them all like that."

Wood ducks streaking low over the decoys at the crack of dawn, swarms of green-wings hitting the pocket and springing upwards at the volley, sometimes-finicky gadwalls working through the cypress tops, tight knots of ring-necks tearing low over the blocks with afterburners blowing, elegant pintails, gleaming in the low sun while banking in formation, fattened greenheads backpedaling and buzzing after they've finally committed - all are shown the love with equal opportunity. And since there's always the inevitable mornings that eager trumps pretty, whoa be unto the lowly shovelers. Bless their hearts, there are parts of the world that they're also called Ramzillas.  

A strap of mallards is especially gratifying in my part of the world these days. The opportunity to bag mallards is never missed, no matter what else is on the radar or how far we've traveled to get there.  Mallard on 4 of the 6 continents visited, in 10 countries and counting, you can take the man out of Mississippi, but can't take Mississippi out of the man.

Ramsey Russell  is a certified  wildlife biologist.  He owns and operates GetDucks.com, a full-time, full-service agency specializing in world-wide trophy duck species and epic wingshooting adventures.  Exploring the world's wetlands for the best duck hunting experiences for his clients is a life mission, but hunting in Mississippi with family and friends, he says, is top priority.  It’s always duck season somewhere.

Is Mexico's liberal pintail limits the reason we're shooting fewer pintail in the US?

Throughout the entire Lower 48 the bag limit for northern pintails will be reduced to 1 daily for the 2017-2018 season, but Mexico duck hunting will continue to entail far more generous pintail limits. Surely it's the over-shooting of pintails south of the border that's causing the pintail limits to be cut in half next year, right? While a number of disenfranchised internet experts seem to think so, this assumption is untrue.  

Consider this: fewer ducks are shot during an entire season in Mexico than in California or Louisiana, for examples, during a typical opening week.  Consider also that the limit on pintail in Alaska is 8 daily. In the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba the limit is 4 daily.  Pintail populations have been struggling for decades, and equitable hunter-harvest is not the reason the continental population of pintail is slipping.  The thousands of northern pintails harvested throughout the North American continent, from Alaska to central Mexico, are a drop in the bucket compared to cumulative attrition represented by an increasingly inadequate amount of safe nesting habitat.

Pintails are short-grass prairie nesters. The principle culprit for the decline of pintail - and it has been scientifically documented for decades - is the conversions of it's nesting habitat to agriculture, and no-till farming practices are an ecological trap.  Pintail now nest in the preceding year's residual stubble. As the current year's crops are planted, their nests are destroyed, sometimes along with the hen. While surviving hens will often re-nest, they produce smaller clutches that yield slower survival rates. Additionally, the prairie pothole region's proliferation to agriculture makes predators more efficient at finding ducks. 

Per the following Wildlife Bulletin article (1999): "The steady conversion of grasslands to cultivation in the western Canadian PPR since the 1950s and 1970s has markedly reduced the extent of safe upland nesting habitat, thereby reducing pintail productivity to levels below the threshold needed to maintain populations. Grain stubble attracts large numbers of pintails to nest in the early spring, and cultivation destroys virtually all nests. Additionally, Greenwood et al. (1995) and Boyd (1985) showed how nest success of prairie ducks, even those that don’t nest in cropland, declined as the proportion of cropland increased in the land- scape because suitable nest sites in scattered grass- lands and planted cover were rare and predators more efficient. Most wetlands in the PPR have been impacted by agriculture (Boyd 1985,Turner et al. 1987), and more than 85% of the region has been cultivated (Millar 1989)." Source: https://www.werc.usgs.gov/fileHandler.ashx...

Ramsey Russell  is a certified  wildlife biologist.  He owns and operates GetDucks.com, a full-time, full-service agency specializing in world-wide trophy duck species and epic wingshooting adventures.  Exploring the world's wetlands for the best client duck hunting experiences is a life mission, but hunting in Mississippi with family and friends, he says, is top priority when home.  It’s always duck season somewhere.

Been there done that too

After returning from his fourth Argentina duck hunt is as many consecutive years, a client called to say he'd had a great time but wanted to venture off the beaten path, do some exploring. 

"I want to be Ramsey," he said. "Everyone wants to be Ramsey until it's time to do real Ramsey-type shit," I replied.

This past fall, we explored some never-before duck hunting destinations throughout Eurasia. A couple were real keepers, stay tuned. A couple others were fascinating adventures but offered little more than an interesting passport new stamp in terms of guided duck hunting trips.   

"Most folks have no idea what a professional hunter or guide does to prepare, arrange and facilitate the customer," he stated as we were making our way through a crowded Amsterdam airport after a dozen days of hunting and travel.

A great example of "what we do" happened while scouting Asia recently.  Listen, when Chinese customs officers start posing with your guns and ammo like a major drug bust on the local 6 o'clock news, you're probably not going anywhere soon.  Nine hours spent in an airport dealing with China's in-transit firearm process - all because someone in customs had failed to notify the proper authorities that we had firearms among our baggage - is a small price to pay so that our future clients are spared the hassle.  There's no way to gain that insight without having personally been there, done that too.  And our clients deserve nothing less.

Ramsey Russell is a certified wildlife biologist.  He owns and operates GetDucks.com, a full-time, full-service agency specializing in world-wide trophy duck species and epic wingshooting adventures.  Exploring the world's wetlands for the best client duck hunting experiences his life's mission, but hunting in Mississippi with family and friends, he says, is top priority when home.  It’s always duck season somewhere. 

Exporting birds from Argentina

"Can birds be brought home from Argentina?" is a question asked often by prospective clients and in social media.  In a single word: No.

Nearly a decade ago, one of Argentina's former presidential administrations passed legislation that prohibited the export of indigenous wildlife. Period. Because Argentina prohibits the export of waterfowl - skinned, unskinned, frozen, taxidermied or otherwise it makes no difference - importing them into the US is illegal and invites the US Fish and Wildlife Service into your life.  For this reason, we tell all of our Argentina duck hunting clients to refrain from bringing birds home, we tell each of our outfitters to not knowingly let clients bring birds home in their baggage, and we have posted in our terms and conditions that it's legally impermissible to do so.

Bummer.

Then the question is usually, "Well, why in the heck would anyone duck hunt in Argentina if you can't bring bird trophies back?!" Because Argentina duck hunting remains one of the very best shotgunning vacations on earth. Because it takes place during our summertime, when there's little else to do but sweat or swat mosquitos.  Because you'll put your hands on about a dozen beautiful new species and that cell phone in your pocket is a terrific camera. Because there are an increasing number of sources for captive-reared Argentina duck species that hunters can legally attain in the US for game room use. And because the memories of time spent enjoying some of the world's best duck hunting in Argentina with family and friends, great food and hospitality, exotic scenery, will last forever - those photos will still look long after trophies would have otherwise collected more dust than a pitcher's mound.

For those reasons, Argentina duck hunting remains among our top-2 destinations worldwide.

More Info: Argentina Duck Hunts

Ramsey Russell  is a certified  wildlife biologist.  He owns and operates GetDucks.com, a full-time, full-service agency specializing in world-wide trophy duck species and epic wingshooting adventures.  Exploring the world's wetlands for the best client duck hunting experiences is a life mission, but hunting in Mississippi with family and friends, he says, is top priority when home.  It’s always duck season somewhere.