Destinations

Add the Ritz Carlton at Reynolds Lake Oconee to the select register of luxury resorts to capitalize on the rise in popularity of social clays shooting.

With its new Sandy Creek Sporting Grounds, the Ritz Carlton at Reynolds Lake Oconee, located in Greensboro, Georgia (80 miles east of Atlanta) has joined other multi-star, clays-appointed properties such as Primland, The Preserve at Boulder Hills, Blackberry Farm, The Homestead, The Greenbrier, Nemacolin and Barnsley Resort.

Although capercaillie and black grouse are the highlights of the Russian spring hunting season, other game birds are also legal that time of year including geese, ducks and woodcock.

The Russian spring season on geese is very much open and is an extremely popular affair. Hunting is done in the traditional manner, from blinds with decoys on the fields where the birds feed. However, the caveat is that wide open spaces that make good resting stations for migrating geese are seldom located anywhere near good grouse habitat in case you’re interested in adding them to your bag.

Argentina is widely known as a wingshooter’s paradise. The Cordoba region is synonymous with “doves galore,” but in the province of Entre Rios you can vary your hunting experience with perdiz (partridge) and ducks. The limits on pigeon, perdiz and ducks are generous, and on doves there’s no limit at all (in Argentina, they are pests that do immeasurable damage to agriculture). Hunting is the most efficient of legal crop protection methods, and hunters are often farmers’ only hope.

The town of Albany figures large in Southern Georgia’s legendary bobwhite quail culture. Most of the year Albany hosts some 76,000 everyday residents, but from November through February the local Southwest Georgia Regional Airport is jam-packed with high-net-worth luxury personal jets conveying quail hunters, their dogs, shotguns, family, friends and business associates,

Even though Anne Kania is owner of the new wingshooting retreat and shooting academy for women called Joy of Hunting, she may in fact be one of the best relationship gurus for couples.

There is no shortage of pheasant hunting lodges in South Dakota. Yet one lodge seems to rise to the top as an Orvis Endorsed Lodge in 2009 and Orvis Wingshooting Lodge of the year and in 2016.

The legendary Matarese family continues its winning ways as their M&M Hunting & Sporting Clays – home of champion Anthony Matarese, Jr. and venue for top clays competitions – exerts their presence of three generations in the industry with an expansion of “fair chase” hunting complemented by old-world luxe lodging within earshot of the Mid-Atlantic’s largest cities.

Stone butts and red grouse on a wine colored Scottish moor. Mule drawn wagons following bobwhite seeking pointers beneath loblolly pines. Rolling hills filled with olive trees and red legged partridge. Undulating plains rhythmically swaying to the wing beats of sharptails.

Gary Kramer is a professional photographer, writer and sportsman. One of his favorite places is Los Laureles Lodge in the Argentina Province of Entre Rios. Here is Gary’s diary from a recent trip to Los Laureles Lodge.

As September approaches, in our secret heart every shotgun disciple anticipates their annual pilgrimage to a beloved place. For some of us it’s the autumnal woods of Maine for woodcock, a goose hunt on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, sporting clays at The National Shooting Complex in San Antonio or maybe throwing clays from that rusty hand-loader at a family barbeque. Personally, that special journey takes me to Griffin & Howe’s gorgeous Hudson Farm in Andover, New Jersey.