Readers & Writers Adventures 2010-'11

The faces and the places change some each year, but the camaraderie of Shooting Sportsman’s Readers & Writers Adventures has become the consistent appeal for the wingshooters who join us every season. Editor-at-Large Silvio Calabi may have summed it up best in previewing the shoots several years ago: “Whether you’re a single, couple, family or hunting buddies, come join our famously agreeable groups to shoot with like-minded new friends you haven’t yet met.”

Contributing Editor Bruce Buck will host our excursions again this fall, reprising a role he thoroughly enjoys. You won’t find a more engaging host in your wingshooting travels, any more than we could find a better goodwill ambassador for Shooting Sportsman. Bruce echoes Silvio’s sage chestnut, saying that our Readers & Writers Adventures offer the chance to travel to a gathering of ready-made friends. “We have a lot of repeats among our shooters,” Bruce observed of the loyal following. But he added that there’s no clubby sense of a closed group among the core of habituals. “Everybody seems to fit in and get along wonderfully. This has always been a group of good people.

“You’re not only going to get top-rate shooting, you’re going there with a great group of guys.”

South Dakota mixed upland bag

This will be our third year hunting at Firesteel Creek Lodge, in northwestern South Dakota, where our groups have had fantastic shooting for sharp-tailed grouse, Hungarian partridge and an ample mix of wild and released pheasants. The Lindskov family owns and operates the expansive ranch and has treated our groups like its own, offering a relaxed setting where everything is taken care of. And it would be nice if we were related, the Lindskov Ranch being among the largest family-owned holdings in the state, with more than 100,000 acres.

Integrating farming, ranching and wildlife has been the family’s focus, and today the ranch’s vast croplands are buffered by tens of thousands of planted trees, the breaks and draws of two river drainages are managed for habitat, and food plots and preserves more than support the hunting pressure. The habitats and hunting styles vary greatly, offering easy walking in crop rows and along field edges or more challenging scrambling and brush busting for a wilder wingshooting experience.

Our group will fly into Bismarck, North Dakota, on Saturday, October 30, for the shuttle trip to the lodge. We’ll have a three-day hunt, and then depart on Wednesday, November 3. The cost of $2,695 includes ground transportation, hunting, lodging, meals, licenses and ammunition. The only additional expenses are taxes, tips and the cost of shipping birds home.

Georgia quail

Our second trip will mark a return visit with friends Bill and Annie Atchison at Rio Piedra Plantation, in Camilla, Georgia, for a classic bobwhite quail hunt. Rio Piedra’s more than 2,000 acres sit in the heart of southern Georgia’s plantation belt surrounded by large private hunting estates. Our Readers & Writers groups have enjoyed the Atchisons’ hospitality several times (the trips usually book fully), and we are not alone in our appreciation: Rio Piedra is the only two-time winner of the Orvis Wingshooting Lodge of the Year Award.

The core of the modern plantation experience blends three seemingly simple elements for hunting that feels lifted from history: the land, the dogs and the quail. Brought together well, the setting is meticulously managed but spontaneous as it is experienced. Rio Piedra uses annual burns to manage its native longleaf and loblolly pine forest for a quail-friendly understory of wiregrass and broomsedge. An extensive early release program of pen-raised birds is supplemented by a healthy influx of wild birds. A kennel-full of pointers and setters will find birds in style.

Our group will arrive in Albany, Georgia, on January 6, 2011, hunt for three days, and depart on January 10. The cost of $3,248 includes ground transportation, hunting, lodging, meals, licenses and ammunition. The only additional expenses are taxes, tips and the cost of shipping birds home.

For more information on our Readers & Writers Adventures, contact Terry Bombeke, 207-594-9544; tbombeke@shootingsportsman.com.