A couple of friends and I had the privilege of getting out on a goose hunt for the first time this season. I have hunted with these guys for years and it’s always nice to be able to get at least one hunt in with each other now that our schedules don’t all mix that well. We were all excited, and it wasn’t hard to tell! We were up out of bed and gone by 5:30 A.M. and we couldn’t even start shooting until 7:00 A.M.!
We set up about 70 shells and 20 full body goose decoys on the edge of the farm pond and 9 floaters about 20 yards out in the pond in front of where we were planning to sit, along with about 100 duck floaters in separate groups. After we got all the decoys out, which ended up being around 6:45, we started making our makeshift blinds out of the fallen trees and weeds from around the pond. Once we had gotten everything finished, we all got snuggled in and started waiting. It looked like it was going to be perfect and we were ready for a fun morning of hunting!
Unfortunately, the geese and ducks weren’t quite cooperating like we had hoped. As the sun rose over the tree line, we heard absolute silence and only a light breeze passed across the pond.
We didn’t see any geese until 9:00 A.M., but we had them locked in on our decoys. It was a flock of about 25 and, luckily, we managed to drop our six birds out of that flock. We only needed two more to fill our limits! Not more than ten minutes later, we had a drake mallard come in to the decoys and we had one of my buddies shoot. Let’s just say he was a little rusty after not shooting his gun since the season before! He unloaded his gun on it and it still escaped untouched. Needless to say, we all had a good laugh at him and poked some jokes at him for that one.
Not long after, it started to get warm out, which is not typical for this time of the year and can really slow down the movement of the birds. So, we decided to start picking up our decoys. As soon as we stepped into the water, a flock of four geese came over the top of the trees only about 20 yards above us. We didn’t even hear them coming! Luckily, we still had two of our guys sitting in their makeshift blinds, and they made two great shots to fill our limits! It was a perfect way to finish the day!
Even though the geese and ducks flight was extremely limited compared to previous weeks, we still managed to all get our limits of two birds per person. Hopefully the migration starts kicking into gear here in the next couple weeks so we can start getting some faster action!
