Last Sunday I was finally able to get out and do a little goose hunting! I picked my friend Darrin up around 5:30 in the morning and we headed out to the field to meet Roy, our other hunting companion. When we arrived it was a balmy 9 degrees out. Roy had called and said that he was running a little late, so not wanting to spend too much time in the heat wave that we were experiencing; we decided to wait in the truck until Roy showed up. The anticipation finally got to me and Darrin and I started setting up our decoys a few minutes before Roy showed up. Darrin being the good friend that he is located our pit in the dark, by almost falling into it. For those that have never hunted out of a ground pit, it is basically a hole that is dug in the ground, and then it is covered with a top of some sort. In this case it was several pieces of plywood that have holes cut in it so that a person can fit down inside the pit and hide.
Anyway, we got most of my decoys set up and then we started throwing out Roy’s decoys. In the
still of the morning you could hear the sound of the geese on a nearby lake. My hopes were high that it would be a good morning filled with a lot of birds committing Hari-Kari. Sun-up came around 7:15 and we were ready! All of us were scanning the sky waiting for the first flock to come in.
8:00, 9:00, and then finally at 10:20 we started seeing our first flocks of geese. The only problem was that they were getting up off the lake and going about a half a mile east of our position to a very safe golf course. So, to say that that pretty much put the nail in coffin for this hunt was an understatement. If you have ever hunted geese, you know that no matter how many decoys you have out, you will never be able to compete with the real thing! The geese were definitely smarter than us on this day. However it wasn’t a complete loss. I was able to hunt with two friends that I don’t get to see or spend much time with and we were able to catch up on what was going on in our own lives. Overall it was a great day.
Stormy, my significant other, thinks we are out of our gourds for sitting in a frozen field for hours, but for those who have experienced the excitement of geese coming into a spread of decoys, with their wings cupped, totally committed and ready to land on your head! You know what I am talking about!
