Goose Hunting
Posted: Wednesday, November 17, 2010
by Jack H. Schick
I went goose hunting this morning. My Brittany, Dobie, and I met my friend Clef and his Lab, Bubby, at the pond just before light. We set up decoys on the water and on the grass fields along the bank. By 10:00am we had 2/3 our limit, and should have gotten more. We had a pile of empty shells. We were two very humiliated shooters on a couple of rounds, but, over all a great day for us and the dogs.
I spooked a couple of mallards off the pond as I took the first bag of decoys over at first light. I shot twice but didn't come close. Clef had a new trick decoy this time. He tied a string to one of the floatables, ran it all the way back to where were sitting so he could tug on it and make it bob. It started to get windy, so we didn't use it much. All the decoys were bobbing and drifting anyway. The half shell plastic ones on land blew over a couple of times. Geese usually don't seem to be too bright, though.
An hour later the first flock came in over the tree line to our right. We blew on our calls like mad. It's surprising how effective that is at getting them to decide to land. We stayed motionless so Clef didn't get to yank on his string. The dogs were figity and certainly didn't try to stay out of sight. We held fire and a dozen of them landed on the pond on the other side of the island. We crouched and scurried over closer shielded by the bridge. When they saw us they flushed.
I carefully aimed at one that was close to another one hoping to hit both and fired. It was hit very hard and dropped into the water. I fired again and knew I missed when I shot. My last shot seemed to nick one, but not enough to slow him up. We frantically honked on our calls. It turned them, but they did not circle back around. Clef looked at me and said, "Did we shoot the same one again?"
"I hit that one for sure" I said.
"Me too!" He smacked himself on the forehead.
Buddy went and got it. I kept Dobie on his rope. "Let the retriever get the first one," I told him. We both were perturbed. I couldn't believe I'd missed four out my first five shots.
Soon after, a single goose came circling over. It could have been the mate of the one we killed. Canada geese mate for life. We called him in and when he set his wings to land we blasted with our magnum load BB shot from our12 gauge shot guns. We emptied our guns-six shots. The bird immediately decided it wasn't safe to land, made a quick left turn and flew straight across in front of us. The dogs yipped and pulled on their lashings. Guns roared. The thing was scared a little, but flew on off over the neighbor's barn and was gone. We apologized to Dobie and Buddy and smacked ourselves on the forehead again. We figured we'd just blown off five bucks worth of ammo.
When the next flock came soaring in the dogs were loose for an exersize run and Clef had just started back to the car to get his hard boiled eggs and wheat bread sandwiches. They hovered up about seventy-five yards out. The dogs ran out into the open and stared to whine at the lock winged geese wobbling in the strong wind. They'd been silent and surprised us. When they saw the dogs and broke off the landing we had to sky bust them at pretty good range. I crumpled one. Clef missed all three shots. We'd gone through almost five magazines full and only had two geese to show for it. Dobie got his turn to retrieve one after getting untangled from a decoy line.
We ate the sandwiches and did a quick inspection of our gun sights. Clef had just put a new fiber optic green glowing front bead on his gun and was beginning to wonder about it. My front bead was knocked off, but I knew that, and had been aiming low to compensate. I was surprised that my shoulder wasn't sore. The dogs looked at us with scorn until we broke out the grub. I could tell Dobie was wondering why all the noise, but no birds.
A little while later another pretty big flock showed up-making no noise again. But, we were ready for them. The word must have gotten around and it took some doing to call them in. Most of them pulled up when they spotted the dogs, but two really dumb ones sailed on in and landed behind the island again. We ran over closer till they saw us and flushed off the water. I fired and one fluttered and flopped into the pond. Clef fired and the other ones wing snapped at a funny angle and it landed on the bank.
"Send Buddy to kill that one," I hollered to Clef, then let Dobie off his rope. He took off and dove into the pond. He soon was wrestling the one I wounded. It was flapping and kicking, but he got it to the nearest bank. Before I got over to it, it got away from him and ran back in the water. He retrieved it again and I stomped its head.
Buddy had a harder time with his. It just had a broken wing. It kept diving and swimming around behind him, out in the middle of the pond. Clef got out his cell phone and videoed some of the hide and seek. Buddy finally got a grip on him and hauled him over to Clef on the island. We were kind of proud of how that one went, except for the fact there had been a dozen of them and we only got shots at two. We sat it out for another hour or so seeing or hearing nothing. We only needed one more each for our limit, and Clef had gone back to the car again for more ammo, so we stuck it out. By then, though, we figured most of the local boys had heard the commotion and weren't coming by for lunch. We'd have to rely on the ones migrating through, and they weren't flying in that wind. Two a piece wasn't a bad morning. We decided to take the dogs over to the game lands and see if we could get some pheasants or rabbits.
We gathered up the decoys, packed our gear, loaded the dead geese into plastic bags, and policed the area for spent shells and litter. Dobie and Buddy took one more dip in the pond and rolled in some fresh, green goose manure before hopping in the cars.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Hi Jack- glad to see you back- How ya doin'? That was an interesting goose hunt- the way you describe it, one can almost feel they are there- Do ya'll eat the geese and ducks? I never did much like the taste of wild fowl... or deer or rabbit or squirrel- oh well, like my husband used to say- I'm just a little city slicker!- Thanks for the story- hope you're staying awhile....Always- Ellaate 'em all
Jack,
Very funny adventurous I presume. To bad you could kill more geese. Is it worthy to spend that much shells and only have two geese.
Thanks you.
Jose Cthanks for commenting
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