# Hunting > Game Bird Hunting >  Judging range

## Bonecrusher

With the advent of steel shot I decided I needed a better guide of distance rather than my eye monitor so a couple of seasons ago I took my 30M  Builders tape out on peg up day and measured thirty / forty M distance from my mai mai pegged them out so I could have a better judge of distance with birds coming into range desired outcome use less shot and minimise wounded birds.

----------


## Kiwi Sapper

Physically installing a removable marker as a distance aid on the battleground was standard practice for the British army up to the end of the 19 th Century.

In your case, you are lucky as most ducks don't carry firearms and use the aid from their side as they fly in. :>)

----------


## gsp follower

> ]Physically installing a removable marker as a distance aid on the battleground was standard practice for the British army up to the end of the 19 th Century.[/U]
> 
> In your case, you are lucky as most ducks don't carry firearms and use the aid from their side as they fly in. :>)


yes that at miserly ammo practises not to mention incompetence at leader ship level
didnt help them at isandhalwana :Angry:  :Grin:

----------


## Kiwi Sapper

> yes that at miserly ammo practises not to mention incompetence at leader ship level
> didnt help them at isandhalwana


Ah well, at least you didn't bring up the old warhorse about the ammunition boxes. :>)

----------


## Bavarian_Hunter

rangefinder as they're flying past?  :Grin: 

It'd be hard once the birds are coming in hard and fast from all angles and heights to use the markers wouldnt it?

Just keep it instinctive, as I read in Dick Eusson's Duck Hunting Australia "Rifles are a science, shotgunning is an art".

----------


## gsp follower

> Ah well, at least you didn't bring up the old warhorse about the ammunition boxes. :>)


no boxer primed 450 miracles that day :Grin:

----------


## gadgetman

> With the advent of steel shot I decided I needed a better guide of distance rather than my eye monitor so a couple of seasons ago I took my 30M  Builders tape out on peg up day and measured thirty / forty M distance from my mai mai pegged them out so I could have a better judge of distance with birds coming into range desired outcome use less shot and minimise wounded birds.


How do you judge the birds relative to the pegs?

----------


## Spudattack

f you put up a big net t 30 yards they will bounce off it and keep them in range.....

----------


## Kiwi Sapper

> no boxer primed 450 miracles that day


Quite right........that happened the following day along with "a bayonet and some guts behind it", if you want to believe the celluloid  "hype". :Have A Nice Day:

----------


## PerazziSC3

Pays to set your decoys at known distances... but very hard to judge birds distance relative to water, unless, well they are on the water ha ha.

----------


## Mike H

> How do you judge the birds relative to the pegs?


How do those without markers judge distance?

----------


## gadgetman

> How do those without markers judge distance?


I go by the old British film saying, "Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes." Last year I shot at and bagged one mallard.

----------


## Toby

You get an idea on when they are in range after a while.

----------


## Nathan F

> Pays to set your decoys at known distances... but very hard to judge birds distance relative to water, unless, well they are on the water ha ha.


+1

----------


## sako75

> I go by the old British film saying, "Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes." Last year I shot at and bagged one mallard.



 :Grin: 
I'm like that with deer. up close and personal

----------

