A Hunting We Will Go

It's been a few years since I have been able to enjoy the chaos that is the Spring Snow Goose Conservation Season. If you've never experienced a snow goose hunt then I can't describe it to, you just have to get out and try it sometime. We didn't have a lot of luck this weekend, but we did have a lot of fun and that's what it's all about. The four of us, Rylan, Chris, Darrin, and I had a nice sneak right at sundown. We started our approach from a mile away and slowly worked our way into the geese. The great thing about the spring season is we can shoot up to 30 minutes after sundown and that's usually be best time to sneak. After we had manged to get about a half of a mile away from the geese we split up into twos and took advantage of the weak spots in the groups - namely the flanks. We took about an hour to get into the geese and with five minutes to go Rylan and Chris opened fire and sent the birds our way. There were quite a few geese around, but not nearly as many as we have seen. In that last few days I have been seeing a few more geese as I go to work and return home.Here's a pretty good picture of Rylan and Chris as they were sneaking the geese. What's that you say? Just a cow? No no, that's a cow decoy! That's one of the strategies we use to sneak up on the geese - they don't seem to mind the cattle in the field and pretending to be a cow seems to work pretty well if you do it correctly.

The real excitement comes when all the geese get up into the air and start making all sorts of noise! We were just hanging out watching the geese land when they came buzzing over us and definitely close enough to take a few shots, but we were not on legal land to shoot so we, being the ethical characters we are, just enjoyed the view and took a few shots with the camera before chasing after them for a more sporting chance.

The one thing about hunting that can really wear a person down are the long hours that are required. Between the four of us we probably had about twelve hours of sleep total. Darrin didn't sleep a wink after his overnight shift and came straight from Lincoln to meet us, Chris' shift ends at 4:00 a.m. and he and Rylan were shooting by 7:00 a.m. I didn't get to sleep until sometime around 3:00 a.m. and met up with Darrin just a few minutes before 8:00. Yet, we still had a good time and a little sleep deprivation here and there isn't so bad.

I'll wrap it up tonight with a video I shot while Darrin and I were working our way towards the geese and sundown. There really isn't much to see, the geese were still over half a mile way, but listen to how much noise they are making already! Give a listen and imagine what we found 20 minutes later.


Until again

-=Nolan=-