Saturdays always seem to be jammed up for hunting. All the kids in school and the working men have this day off to hunt. I had been targeting this day for some weeks to take my Nephews snow goose hunting.
"Sorry, no can do," my brother replied back. "The guys have ball team try-outs."
I called Jimmy and he was more than ready to go.
"It is calling for heavy wind so let's get there in the dark to get set up. It should be a good day for decoying those wily white birds."
"I'll see you at O dark thirty," Jimmy replied.
I parked my truck next to Jimmy's and opened the door.
"Listen to that," Jimmy exclaimed. His eyes were wide open with excitement.
I let Jaz out and stepped away from the trucks to listen. The roar of thousands of snow geese, mixed with specklebellies filled the dark morning air.
"Wow, that's incredible," I said to Jimmy. "Let's get to the blind and get set up as quickly as we can. This might be a good day."
The wind was blowing hard enough that we would not have to lug heavy batteries to the vortex machines, a real plus for us old guys.
Daylight slipped up on us all to quickly. We were racing around getting the final decoys in place.
The roar of barking snow geese from the roosting ponds a mile away suddenly grew to an almost deafening pitch.
"They're getting up, let's get to the blind!" I shouted to Jimmy.
We both took off on a sprint for the blind.
The skies filled with white birds, but in the early dawn, looked like a huge black cloud rising from the ponds. In just minutes waves of squawking birds were overhead.
A single dropped out of a flock and came sailing down into the decoys.
"Is it a snow goose or a specklebelly?" I whispered to Jimmy.
"I can't tell, it's just too dark against the clouds to see," Jimmy whispered back.
The goose was in very close range when we could finally make out white bird, black wing tips.
"Snow goose!" we both said in unison, "Take it now!"
We had our first bird of the morning.
Wave after wave of snow geese poured over us as the morning progressed. The shear number of birds flying over insured us that some would decoy.
At first we would jump up and shoot the geese on their first pass over in range, but as the morning progressed we started letting the birds work around and around and settling them into the decoys right in our faces.
The sight of hundreds of little white geese circling into the decoys, and the roar of hundreds of snow geese voices was almost mind blowing.
My little hunting partner dog, Jaz, was almost into overload. She would shiver in excitement as the geese passed right over the blind. When I would tell Jimmy to, "take them" Jaz would let out a bark herself. Jimmy and I laughed at the excitement of the old dog.
Throughout the morning, I kept saying I wished we had Gary's boys with us to share such a special hunt. A hunt like this is so hard to come by now days.
"This is why we come morning after morning, and sit for hours on end in total boredom," I commented to Jimmy, while stuffing shells into my gun. The barrel was so hot I could hardly touch it. "If you do enough of theses hunts you hit it great once in a while."
By noon I was nearing the end of my shells. "Man, I should have brought more shells," I said to Jimmy.
"I've got about one more box left, I'll share with you if you need," he replied.
I rubbed my sore shoulder and decided I did not need to dip into his shell stash. "I'm good for a while, and we have had such a great morning, I'm good to head home when it slows down."
Around one O'clock the birds settled onto their resting ponds and the skies cleared of white geese. Jaz was worn out, and we decided to call it a day.
"Wow, what a hunt," I said as we hi-fived and began gathering things up for a trip to the truck.
We laid our geese out on the bank to find we had got an amazing twenty-six geese... by far our best day for two guys.
Forever will be the sight and sound of that morning burned into my memory, of the white geese descending out of the clear sky and into our decoys, time after time. The little yellow Lab quivering with excitement and barking as we rose to shoot at the geese.
It was truly an amazing snow goose hunt.
No comments:
Post a Comment