Only on short throws, like when pulling low hangers, or when rigging a single limb, like a long dead one where you want it chokered toward the center or tip, rather than nearby where you'll cut. On these limb-rigging throws, they're generally really easy throws and the 'brake' is to redirection the arc back toward you, and maybe to slow the bag right before it reaches your hand. That way you may not have to take a single step to throw, retrieve, clip on rope, pull up and over, clip rope back to itself, pull til it chokers, done. That whole procedure can take as much time as it took you to read this paragraph.
If its a long throw (or bigshot) and I need to brake, I'll step lightly on the shotline winder. Long throws (or shots), I just keep my hands away.
Like anything in life, as the saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a shrew.
As far as professional shrew skinners goes, there's the one who pretty much has skinned shrews the same way as when he started. Then there's the shrew skinning technician who through his career has tried hundreds of different ways to skin a shrew, many failures, but along the way has picked up the finer nuances, added the tricks and methods to his bag and through his constant belief that the shrew can be skinned faster and more accurately he can now skin three shrews every ten minutes where it takes other shrew skinners anywhere from 31 minutes to an hour to skin a single shrew.
So, if you're getting serious about skinning shrews, I might suggest you go to critterskinners.com, a forum dedicated to the practice, and quite likely you will find a thread..... it could be titled 'Shrew skinning nightmare', or something, and likely you'll hook up with some experienced shrew skinners who will share with you
every one of their secrets if you keep asking the right questions.
:love1:
when I'm trying to set a line.
