Finding downed birds

Few things are sweeter to a wing shooter than making a good shot on flying game birds. If you don’t recover that bird, however, that feeling quickly turns sour — no one wants to leave a fallen game bird in the field.

The best prevention is a good dog. But a dogless hunter can recover downed birds effectively too, if they employ a few proven techniques.

Watch birds, listen, and learn

The surest way to increase your odds of recovering a downed bird is to watch it fall all the way down.

If the bird is dead, the recovery should be easy. When obstacles such as trees, shrubs, or cattails prevent you from seeing the downed bird or the last few feet of its fall. You know it is somewhere behind that cover, but where?

Listening sometimes helps you narrow the search area. You might hear a wounded duck trying to bury itself in marsh grass. Or making its final splashes. Likewise, a mortally wounded grouse will sometimes beat its wings or rustle leaves as it expires, and this can also help a hunter pinpoint it.

Also, recall if you heard a splash, thud, or the breaking of branches. These clues help, too.

In my experience, the best practice is to mark the closest feature where you saw it drop or last heard it. Start your search there.

Tricky terrain

It is more difficult when a bird lands in a large swath of homogenous habitat, such as a grassy meadow, a stubble field, or an expansive cattail marsh. The trick here is to mark something directly in line with where you saw the bird fall. Then estimate the distance to where you think the bird ended up.

This allows you to give your hunting buddy simple details such as, “The duck I just shot landed directly in line with that broken spruce on shore. It’s about 30 yards out from the blind.” Then when you set out to retrieve it, and you can’t see a thing because you are dragging a canoe or wading through the cattails, you can raise a paddle every now and then, and your buddy can provide you with verbal directions to the location.

In the uplands, mark the landmark closest to the fall, then stay put and direct your hunting partner on the retrieve.

No matter how precisely you mark a bird’s fall, there will be times when you get to where the bird should be, and it is not in plain sight. Then, slow down and really examine your surroundings for clues and likely hiding places where a wounded bird might go.

The search for birds

Poke sticks or paddles into any place where a bird might hide. If you are searching for ducks, look for wake on a water’s surface, which might be the duck swimming away with just its nostrils above water. Sometimes, it also pays to sit still once you get to where it should be. Often, a nervous wounded bird will make noise or show itself as it tries to hide or escape.

If you can’t find the bird in the area expand your search. Also, consider the trajectory of the falling bird. If a bird is coming in low and quick and you lose sight of it five feet above the ground or water, its trajectory can carry it a few yards from where you last saw it, even stone dead. If it fell in water, a current might carry a dead bird away from the area too. Also pay particular attention at bends and back eddies.

Look for feathers, blood, disturbed or broken vegetation too. And view the area from a low level if you can, which might reveal a dead bird beneath leaves or branches. Often, you’ll see a duck or grouse’s eyeballs first or just part of the bird, such as an upturned wing or light-coloured breast. If you can’t find it and are certain it’s around, persist and don’t rule out unusual places. I have found dead grouse caught high in a shrub they fell into. I once found a duck that landed dead in the hollow of a stump.

Going it alone

When hunting alone, I sometimes shoot a compass bearing to the landmark nearest to where I think the bird fell. Then I estimate the range to it. If I’m in the uplands, I’ll leave a piece of trail tape or a hat at the place I took the bearing from. Then I will follow my compass bearing as directly as I can to the fall location and begin my search.

If I can’t get to it directly (perhaps because a blown-down tree is in the way), I will detour and use a back bearing to line up with the trail tape or hat and proceed to the range. You might think this is unnecessary — and in open cover it often is — but it is also amazing how, in heavier or more homogenous cover, trees, or clumps of grasses look alike once you leave the location you noted them from.

Shoot responsibly

Here’s something else to consider. If you want to recover a bird, don’t shoot at it over places where the odds of recovery are poor. If you can’t take your canoe or wade safely deep into the tangle of willows and cattails behind your blind, don’t shoot birds that are going to fall there.

Also, unless you are hunting over terrain where retrieval and finding downed birds is easy, forego your chance at shooting other birds and just follow that first one down. After all, a bird in the hand is worth more than two in the bush — and, hopefully, there will be more.

Originally published in Ontario OUT of DOORS’ 2023-2024 Hunting Annual