Hungarian Partridge Hunting Tips

Partridges are usually associated with European bird games and even when it's a popular catch among European hunters, birds catchers from North America also have the chance to go behind these exotic birds.

In most North America birds hunting grounds, Hungarian Partridge is the most frequent seen partridge; with an overall weight of 14 oz and a total length of 12 to 14" these jumpy birds which usually form a covey where males and females are hard to differentiate.

Since they are so nervous, it's pretty difficult to get close to the covey, in fact warning calls will begin even before the hunter reaches 30 feet from the covey, if the approximation continues the birds will fly away a hundred of yards to regroup the covey. If the hunter insists in going towards the flock, same thing will occur once and once again in an attempt to discourage the human predator.

Nevertheless if you keep going, sooner or later birds will change their strategy and will fly away one from the other to set down as singles, giving you a better chance to shoot one; however it's not an easy task since a close range shot is not easy to achieve.

Hungarian partridges love to life on open landscapes and farmlands, hence a good strategy to catch them is to set at the end of the open field and wait properly covered until the get near to you. A good way to encourage the flock to get closer is using a beater to push the birds towards the hunting place where a good armed hunter with a 12 gauge shotgun will be able to knock down several birds before they realize about the trap and move away.

After snowing it's much easier to locate partridges because of their particular color but it's also more difficult to chase them without being detected, on this regard a white cover would be helpfull.

Regarding dogs, it's not mandatory to work with them, in fact it your canine companions are not well disciplined they could end scaring all the birds making them to fly far away; however if you count with a very disciplined, quiet dog, it could be the best companion to push birds towards you and retrieve catches.

As usual, practice drives to mastery, thus if you are interested on exotic catches, Hungarian partridges are a good starting point..