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This past Saturday I went goose hunting for the first time all year. I had been checking with the lease manager, and had postponed it because the geese just hadn't arrived yet.
Background: This is my first year with this outfit - Hunter's Praire (http://www.waterfowl.com/). I was with another group last year, but opted to not go back with them - mainly because as a season lease holder, I felt they gave their best properties to their day hunters. This group (Hunter's Praire) is actually more like a hunting club than a pure lease. Essentially you get an unlimited number of guided hunts for your membership (on geese - ducks you can do on your own). This is both good & bad.
Good * you get the good spots that they scouted the day before. This is a HUGE benefit * the guides will always have enough decoys * the guides can keep the other people you're with 'in-line'
Bad * you pretty much always will hunt with people you don't know. This includes day hunters. But in all honesty, none of the people that I was put with were bad folks - and a couple were downright nice.
Anyway, I showed up at the truckstop in Brookshire at 4:00 am and was one of the first people there. By 4:30 most of the people that wanted to hunt that day had arrived and by 5:00 we were matched up with our guides. I was put with a fairly young guy by the name of Scott, but he had that 'grizzeled vetern hunter' look to him. When we got out to the field, I did a head count and it turned out that were 11 of us in our group (including Scott). More than I like, but I was keeping an open mind.
We spent the next hour and half setting out the decoy spread - almost all rag/windsocks with a couple dozen shells out in the front. Several groups of birds - mostly sandhill cranes - actually tried to land in the decoys as we were setting them out. The last thing we did was a couple of people, including Scott, dug inclinded pits to lay in. When the daylight started breaking, it became evident that the weather was going to be pretty close to ideal - fairly low clouds, some drizzle, a fairly stiff wind (10-20 mph). I took up a spot 2nd from the end of the line.
Scott did all the calling using his mouth only and was exceptional. A couple of the guys tried blowing on calls, and *to me* they sounded ok, but Scott made it clear that he didn't want them doing it. We had quite a few groups of birds coming over pretty quickly, most of them angling in on my side. Most of the birds would come in pretty close (35-40 yards) then flair off - most likely due to the noise of the wind on the windsocks. We had 1 group of Canadas come in from directly behind us and only about 10 yards up - as a group we only knocked down 1 since most of us (well, me) couldn't get turned around to get off a shot.
We had 3 dogs in the group - 1 owned by Scott, 2 by hunters. None of the dogs had any since of what steadyness was (for that matter, neither did their owners). The dogs would be steady until the first shot, but after that, they were gone. If the truth be told, Scott's dog breaking is probably what allowed it to mark the geese that ended up in the adjacent fields (he was probably 300 yards out by the time the bird hit the ground). He was sent on 1 blind of close to 1000 yards - well, sort of blind. He would go out about 200 yards then start looking around - forunatelly, this was a cut rice field and we could see the bird from where we were. Once the dog spotted it, he went the other 800 yards on his own (I'm just glad it wasn't a piece of trash).
Over all, we ended up killing 19 geese (1 canada, 4 Ross', 14 snows - all juvinelles). I know for my part, I shot close to 2 boxes of shells to get my share of birds (really bad shooting, even by my standards). Some of the guys apparently don't like to either eat or clean geese, so those of us who do divided up the birds amoungst ourselves (I took 4 home). We could have killed (or rather, shot at) some sandhill cranes, but they are not in season for another 3 weeks yet.....
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Chris Barnes AOL IM: cnbarnes
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