Note: Blog Includes Video. I held off on posting this blog about a hunt at Uruguay Lodge until the feature in Safari Club International's "Safari" magazine was published. That article ran in the July/August issue, with Ms. Anna Ackerman in the lead photo. Check out the short video covering our mixed-bag experience and access the digital version of the magazine by clicking on the photo of Anna with a Mossberg SA-20 below. Her first time wingshooting! What a great experience for a kid from semi-rural Virginia. You can also scroll down and see the image gallery for more of the full experience, as well as peek at the trip costs.
I bought this hunt at a banquet staged by the Fredericksburg, Virginia, chapter of Ducks Unlimited. It was a two-person hunt and I asked my friend Bob Ackerman if he wanted to be the second hunter. We also thought it might be a great family adventure and my wife Maria and Bob's wife Amy and their daughter Anna joined in. The Uruguay hunt was also a wonderful opportunity to try out some of Mossberg's new autoloaders and the sweet shooting Silver Reserve II over/under. South American dove shoots can be notoriously rough on shoulders and guns, especially if shooting 12-gauge models.
The light-kicking 28-gauge SA-28 and 20-gauge SA-20 were fun to shot and a good way to break a youngster into the world of wingshooting. Recoil is darn near imperceptible with a 28. While the autoloaders were mainly used in the dove fields, Bob and I alternated with the Silver Reserve II in the duck blind and perdiz fields. The Silver Reserve II and the semiautomatic shotguns were light-handling, just as they were on a South Dakota pheasant hunt the previous autumn. For that blog, click here.
The food at the lodge was incredible, with the two chefs and staff doing everything to make your experience one to remember. Our culinary journey plus our post-hunt visit to Montevideo, Uruguay's capital, was partly chronicled in this blog from earlier in the year. If you like grilled meats, South America is the place to be. The Argentinian and Uruguayan style of cooking over open flame is unparalleled.
One point to note is that Uruguay Lodge no longer offers duck hunts. They are focusing on perdiz (a small partridge about twice the size of a quail), doves and pigeon. Pigeon are abundant and in no way similar to your inner city statue poopers. And, if I have to be honest, perdiz hunting was by far the most fun of the trip. If I could go and hunt perdiz for three or four consecutive days with an afternoon or two of dove shooting, that would be an ideal experience. Anyhow, check out the video. It merges nearly 100 video scenes, starting with doves shoots, followed by ducks and perdiz, and the lodge culinary experience. I didn't realize I talked to the camera that much when I missed! The photo gallery is below the video as you scroll down. For a listing of trip costs, click here. As always, please like, share and all that other social media stuff. I hope you have wonderful, memorable experiences afield. This old world is shrinking and many of these opportunities are finite. Get out and experience them while you have an opportunity.
