October 27th Bird Hunt

[2 Tollers]

I have been working long days and I was supposed to leave Thursday for a 2 ½ day duck / goose hunt with two buddies. I ended up working Friday until 6 so the most I could get would be Saturday morning. In the usual rush to get out of the house and pack the decoys, guns, dogs, food etc, I left my camera behind.

Just got out of the City and thought I would call and let them know I would be late and was advised that they were hunting in 6 inches of snow as it had snowed steady all day Thursday and they had a goose field lined up for Saturday

Got to the cabin and they told me all the ducks and geese they had seen in the snow and shot at, but did not hit. They were have lots of trouble with wind and snow blowing around judging lead and range.

Got into the field this morning and set up. The wind was brisk from the roost lake to our field which was about 2 miles from the lake. Birds would be coming in fast, over fly and have to turn back. Not as many birds came back to the field as they had seen. Most likely due to the bad weather the previous day as many birds were flying out further to feed.

Our set up worked really well for those that did come in and I really kicked myself for forgetting the camera. Great views on the snow field with decoys, dogs and flocks coming in.

I find that each outing there is some interesting things that happen that are unique to that particular day. These are some of the ones from this day:

1. I shot a goose that locked up and glided about ½ mile. My buddies said man you have a walk. So I leave 1 dog behind and take the other and we head out. Get out into the other field and see the goose laying down about 100 yds out in the snow. Send the dog and the goose starts to fly and run low to ground – pretty good race that the dog won. Watching the snow fly as the dog was going was pretty cool. There is no way I could have ran this bird down. Picked the bird up, man this is a big bird – gotta weigh this one it must be 13+ lbs, start the ½ mile walk back. About 1/3 of the way back this goose must be 14 to 15, one-half way back – man I think I have a 22 pounder. On the way home stop at a butcher shop to get it checked and the butcher asks me how much do you think before it goes on the scale – I say 12.5 to 13 he says 13.5 and it weighs in just under 14. Very nice bird and best of the year so far.

2. While I was off on my nature hike several times the guys shotguns were going off behind me. I get back to the decoys and ask how it went. Buddy tells me one bird glided down into a treed block and he went to get it with the other dog. The bird hid in grass and he gave the dog the "hunt it up" command and the dog worked the grass and locked in on it like upland sit to flush. As my partner walked over the goose then took off running in the trees and my partner said hunt it up - the dog would run it down, corner it and wait. My partner forgot about the "take it" command. This happened a couple of times. Finally when he said "take it" the dog pinned the bird to ground and waited for him to come over for the pick up. This was another good sized bird.

3. One flock that came in and we shot up, I thought one of the leaving birds looked a little wobbly and it headed direct back to roost water when the others went off to find a new feeding spot. I watched the wobbly one with the bino's and it went down in a different field a long ways away. Told the guys that would be one we would need to drive over and maybe the dogs could find it, if we could get permission to go on the land. After we picked up we drove to the field and walked out. There were a few ravens and magpies on a fence line aways off. We just started to get close and 2 big bald eagles lifted off. Looked like they had just started on the goose as they had stripped all the breast meat off. Now the funny part of this is that when we started shooting in the morning these 2 eagles had over flown our field a couple of times, looked the decoys over and then went and sat in a tree line about 1/4 mile away. Seems like a shotgun going off is a dinner gong for them.

Pretty good day over-all just wish I had not forgot the camera.