December is the holiday season, the season for caring, sharing, and shooting geese. Waterfowl hunting in my book cannot be beat. Squirrel and rabbit hunts pale in comparison to the fast paced action that is waterfowl hunting. The call, the illusion you create and the lack of time to get up and shoot as a Pintail Mallard our Canadian buzz your blind in an attempt to join a pack of decoys. That, coupled with the short range of Steel shot
can make for some exciting moments.
So early one morning a couple buddies and I setup in a field in certain "strategic" positions in ground blinds that left us far apart. Mostly because we couldn't come to an agreement on setup location. We are out in the cut corn for a couple hours and calling in some geese. At this point the score was Adam 2, Shawn 1, me 0. My frustration grew because we were running out of field time and I still hadn't gotten a shot. Well as I was busy over thinking this I completely missed a flock that came in right over my head and Shawn filled his limit with a last bird.
It's was cold to say the least and the guys I was hunting with left to sit in the car as they bagged there limit and we only had about half an hour to hunt. Well, actually, they went to the car because we were supposed to be leaving and I was too hard headed to leave the field early with no harvested geese. As time ticked away I grew anxious and so did my hunting partners. With about 5 minutes left I began to call in a flock of Canadians while Shawn and Adam began to call me. Feeling crunched for time when the flock came in I simply stood up and started laying lead. Downing my two birds for the day. The first shot I took was long and I hadn't payed much attention to the bird other than the fact that he went down. My second goose was close (one of those birds who was very much caught off guard and couldn't slow down fast enough) and it was a square hit to the head.
At this point I was well past my time limit and my phone was back to ringing of the hook. Knowing why the phone was ringing I ran to my birds grabbed them both by the feet and ran the 150 yards to the car. I signaled for the guys to pop the trunk and I stuffed the birds inside and we were off.
We drove for about 10 minutes and were about 5 minutes away from home when I heard a noises like Shawn had a trunk full off stuff and we'd just hit a big bump. I said "what the hell is banging around in your trunk like that?" Shawn said "nothing, only thing in there is 6 dead birds and our three shotguns." After a long pause and all three of us thinking, Adam began to snicker and said "Harry, that's your problem, however, I can't wait to see how this works out." I suddenly remembered the long shot, the unchecked bird and the hasty grab and go. I had just put a live bird in the trunk and he was pissed.
I don't know if you've ever dealt with live our wounded geese but either way they can be mean. Alot of premium hunting dogs won't even retrieve a wounded goose from the water. Yeah they're that nasty sometimes, and this time was no exception. I move to the back of the car and slowly opened the trunk. Then, BAM the bird came exploding from the trunk in a blur of feathers and wings. I had no time to react so I just ran backwards like I had no sense. However my new bird friend was relentless, somehow he managed to stay on my shoulder and neck the whole way beating me with his wings and biting me in the face and ear. As a natural reaction I smacked the bird off me and ran even farther. The whole time my helpful friends Adam and Shawn sat back and laughed and laughed some more. I was later told I yelled "someone shoot this f**king thing!" At that point I'm not sure if I was joking or not.
Now, we let the bird and myself calm down for a moment. So our plan became to catch the bird and release it as he really seemed to be fine. We didn't really know what else to do with it, we couldn't dispatch it there because we were in a kalldisac and the local wildlife rehab couldn't take geese.
What ended up happening was the goose made it into the garage where I was viciously attacked one last time. Afterwards the bird managed to elude us for 2 hours. Finally when Shawn came back from his appointment he managed to find this damn thing and by now it wasn't looking well. So we chased it out to the back yard and I humanly dispatched it with a Winchester 1300. Needless to say the cops were called and nobody was issued a ticket for shooting within 500ft of a dwelling. I think this is partially due to my old man being in the sheriffs dept and partially because our story was something to be told.
If there is a moral to this story I'm going to guess that it's make sure your not stuffing live geese in your trunk, it certainly becomes a problem later on. It's also bad PR for the hunting community. I should have probably been more responsible but at the same time "sh*t happens man".
Thanks for reading and check out my other posts "UNDERCOVER DEC" and "DID YOU JUST SHOOT?"
Please comment I love to hear from and interact with my readers!
can make for some exciting moments.
So early one morning a couple buddies and I setup in a field in certain "strategic" positions in ground blinds that left us far apart. Mostly because we couldn't come to an agreement on setup location. We are out in the cut corn for a couple hours and calling in some geese. At this point the score was Adam 2, Shawn 1, me 0. My frustration grew because we were running out of field time and I still hadn't gotten a shot. Well as I was busy over thinking this I completely missed a flock that came in right over my head and Shawn filled his limit with a last bird.
It's was cold to say the least and the guys I was hunting with left to sit in the car as they bagged there limit and we only had about half an hour to hunt. Well, actually, they went to the car because we were supposed to be leaving and I was too hard headed to leave the field early with no harvested geese. As time ticked away I grew anxious and so did my hunting partners. With about 5 minutes left I began to call in a flock of Canadians while Shawn and Adam began to call me. Feeling crunched for time when the flock came in I simply stood up and started laying lead. Downing my two birds for the day. The first shot I took was long and I hadn't payed much attention to the bird other than the fact that he went down. My second goose was close (one of those birds who was very much caught off guard and couldn't slow down fast enough) and it was a square hit to the head.
At this point I was well past my time limit and my phone was back to ringing of the hook. Knowing why the phone was ringing I ran to my birds grabbed them both by the feet and ran the 150 yards to the car. I signaled for the guys to pop the trunk and I stuffed the birds inside and we were off.
We drove for about 10 minutes and were about 5 minutes away from home when I heard a noises like Shawn had a trunk full off stuff and we'd just hit a big bump. I said "what the hell is banging around in your trunk like that?" Shawn said "nothing, only thing in there is 6 dead birds and our three shotguns." After a long pause and all three of us thinking, Adam began to snicker and said "Harry, that's your problem, however, I can't wait to see how this works out." I suddenly remembered the long shot, the unchecked bird and the hasty grab and go. I had just put a live bird in the trunk and he was pissed.
I don't know if you've ever dealt with live our wounded geese but either way they can be mean. Alot of premium hunting dogs won't even retrieve a wounded goose from the water. Yeah they're that nasty sometimes, and this time was no exception. I move to the back of the car and slowly opened the trunk. Then, BAM the bird came exploding from the trunk in a blur of feathers and wings. I had no time to react so I just ran backwards like I had no sense. However my new bird friend was relentless, somehow he managed to stay on my shoulder and neck the whole way beating me with his wings and biting me in the face and ear. As a natural reaction I smacked the bird off me and ran even farther. The whole time my helpful friends Adam and Shawn sat back and laughed and laughed some more. I was later told I yelled "someone shoot this f**king thing!" At that point I'm not sure if I was joking or not.
Now, we let the bird and myself calm down for a moment. So our plan became to catch the bird and release it as he really seemed to be fine. We didn't really know what else to do with it, we couldn't dispatch it there because we were in a kalldisac and the local wildlife rehab couldn't take geese.
What ended up happening was the goose made it into the garage where I was viciously attacked one last time. Afterwards the bird managed to elude us for 2 hours. Finally when Shawn came back from his appointment he managed to find this damn thing and by now it wasn't looking well. So we chased it out to the back yard and I humanly dispatched it with a Winchester 1300. Needless to say the cops were called and nobody was issued a ticket for shooting within 500ft of a dwelling. I think this is partially due to my old man being in the sheriffs dept and partially because our story was something to be told.
If there is a moral to this story I'm going to guess that it's make sure your not stuffing live geese in your trunk, it certainly becomes a problem later on. It's also bad PR for the hunting community. I should have probably been more responsible but at the same time "sh*t happens man".
Thanks for reading and check out my other posts "UNDERCOVER DEC" and "DID YOU JUST SHOOT?"
Please comment I love to hear from and interact with my readers!
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