Spring Time!!

Maximize your time outside…

It happened, last night at 2am, the clocks went forward an hour. We’ve been gifted an extra hour of daylight. Locally, the Bradford Pears have been blooming, most of the chill is gone from the air, and we haven’t remembered that pine pollen is a thing yet. It’s the perfect time of year, and many people’s favorite. It’s looking and feeling like early spring here in the RTP area.

Given these conditions, as somebody who lives, breathes, and makes their living off firearms, I’ve already steamrolled myself with plans and ideas to shake off the long winter blues I’ve had this year and make the most out of this beautiful time. Most hunting seasons may be over, but this time of the year is just as good as fall for lovers of the firearms and outdoors. Whether you’re local to us here in NC, or almost anywhere else in the country, when your spring moment hits, there’s plenty of shooting to be done. Here are just a few things you can maximize your time outdoors with this month.

Predator Hunting

… Or more specifically, coyote hunting, at least as far as the local NC crowd is concerned. The big coyote tournaments may have taken place last month, and many regard the really cold snap of January to February as primetime for calling coyotes here in NC, but I think that these first couple weeks of time change is still gold for the pursuit.

The extra hour of daylight offers many hunters who don’t have thousands of dollars in night vision, thermals, lights, and high-racks a chance to get out after work and do some daylight calling. All you need is a mouth call or two, your deer camo, a rifle/shotgun with some good ammo, and some patience and you can dip your toes in to a new type of hunting you may never have tried.

Not only are you back in the woods for the spring, but there’s plenty of good reason to jump on board now. Coyotes are still mating, running wild trying to feed on everything, and responding to a variety of different calls (If you doubt that, go ahead and ask a turkey hunter what coyotes can be like in the spring). Also, fawning season is right around the corner, so if you’re trying to look after the deer on your hunting property, keeping the coyotes at bay now is a good way to do so.

Plus, at it’s core, it’s a vastly different experience than the deer stand hunting you may be used to, faster paced, and utilizing equipment to keep you at it through the night (check your local hunting regulations).

Predator hunting has gone from a necessary management process for game hunters to a growing culture of it’s own all over the US, so if you have a spring hunting itch that needs scratching, or a gear addiction like I do, we’ll help set you up with ammo, optics, or a new firearm to help try it out!

Sporting Clays…

…Or trap and skeet, shotgun games, whatever your favorite version is, this is far and away the best time of year for it. While most competition shooting picks up in the spring, I’ve always leaned towards sporting clays for the first few weeks of nice weather. 

One, sporting clays are easy to practice on my own. Clay shooting spots are already open and maintained. Even if I reset my inevitably forgotten Practiscore password, and get back into different pistol and rifle competitions later through the spring and summer, sporting clays are where I like to start. All I have to do is show up with my shotgun and a case of shells, and I can take advantage of the gorgeous weather on my own time.

I’m not a rich man, so I can’t hunt waterfowl. So sporting clays also give me an opportunity to get my shotgun back out for the first time since dove season and get warm with it again. The higher I score, the more my confidence is inflated. “I may even go after turkeys this year,” is a thought that I tend to have while I’m on a high-scoring round of sporting clays, even though come turkey season, I’ll be humbled again by my nemesis bird.

.22 Everything

When the weather is this nice, it’s easy to find yourself wanting to stay on the range. When a day off falls in line with one of those perfect days, I wouldn’t rather be doing anything else. It’s a struggle of mine to keep myself from sitting behind one of my centerfires and burning barrels and ammunition at an irresponsible rate, so rather than develop any sort of self-control, I started bringing along a .22 with me years ago and for me it’s developed entirely into it’s own obsession.

The mention of .22LR used to bring to mind cheap old rifles with faded bluing and worn wood, shooting cans off a fallen tree, and doing my best to line up on a squirrel with bent iron sights. But nowadays, being surrounded constantly by the coolest and newest the firearms industry has to offer, and making slightly more money than sense per year has drastically changed what .22LR means to me.

Turns out, you can scale down any of your favorite shooting sports for the cartridge. Those ELR rifles pictured above, all .22LR. It’s been considered good practice for years now to build up a precision rifle in .22, as the process for shooting 200-400 yards with the cartidge translates pretty well to shooting much further distances with your larger centerfire rifles.

.22LR race pistols are built off Ruger Mk4s and similar platforms every day, there are versions of 10/22 rifles that cost as much as a family sedan and run all sorts of competitions, and it’s becoming increasingly more possible and popular to get ahold of a .22LR version of your carry gun and be able to put in way more practice, for way less ammo cost.

You can really take the gear setups as low or high cost as you’d like with .22, but in the end, your likely to put a lot more rounds down range and develop more skills while spending a lot less on ammo.

I don’t know if everyone enjoys the change of seasons as much as I do, but if you’re like me, you’ve been making plans yourself for when the temperature ticks above 60 and it’s daylight when you get off work. I know there’s a ton more to do out there, so I want to know, what is it that’s getting you excited this year? What are your early spring plans? If I’m going to try something new this year, what do you recommend? Let me know in the comments below, or, as  always, email me at cj@fuquaygun.com and tell me what you’re into this year or educate me more on any one of these three. I always enjoy hearing from you. Thanks for reading!