Goose Hunting December 13 2008

Saturday morning at 4:30 I got started over to Blake's to head out to for a goose hunting trip with Blake, Skyler and our friend Ryan. The field we were hunting was bean stubble, not because that is the best cover for goose hunting especially with corn stubble all around, but we did have permission to hunt the field which is in the flight path of lots of ducks and geese. We got all the decoys set and our ground blinds covered to blend in within an hour and a half of getting to the field.

The set up was a bit unusual, with us being out in front of the decoys, since tucking up against a fence was the only way to get ourselves concealed.

The sun rise was spectacular.

There was a little bit of standing around waiting for birds to fly, but within an hour or so of sun up we started seeing some birds in the air. Our site gave us a view of flocks coming from two to three miles away. In spite of having our decoy set up in bean stubble we had a several flocks come in range. The wind was really stong from the south the birds for the most part were coming from the north. They apparently saw the corn field, which was to our north and the 150 or so decoys and thought this was a great place to feed. The birds locked in and glided right up to the fence and then seemed to notice that the decoys were on bare ground. The trick worked well enough that we got our limit by about 2:30. When we ended the hunt we had six birds in our possession. It took about an hour to get everything packed up. After we had everything loaded onto the trucks we went looking for the two birds that had gone down several hundred yards away and recovered one of them so we ended up with seven.

On our way home we drove around the surrounding several miles and saw lots of birds in fields that had no hunters in them. It was remarkable that we got any geese at all.