The old goose hunter looked at the ejector of his 870.  It was stuck.  The shell would not eject.  “Damn it,” he said aloud.  His curse could not be heard over the deafening din of the e-caller that was sucking snow geese toward a tumbleweed covered rock pile that concealed three snow goose hunters.   The old timer had to get that shell out of the barrel so that he could put the steel to more of those screeching snow geese. 

    The old 870 often had a mind of its own.  It didn't like to eject shells when pointed straight up into the sky.  The hunter knew this idiosyncrasy and had persuaded the old girl to relinquish the sticky shells in the past by using a little brute force.  The hunter grabbed the slide, raised the gun straight into the air and, as the adrenalin flowed, slammed the stock against the ground.  It was a bit much. The red shell casing popped out and fell into the growing pile of expended shells at the root of the tumbleweeds.  The hunter grabbed more red shells and began inserting the first one into the receiver.  The left hand moved the slide forward just a fraction of an inch.  But, that's all the farther it would move.  The hunter looked frantically into the receiver and realized that something was still wrong with his gun.  The ejector would not close.  He yelled to his other two buddies on the rock pile, “My gun is broken.”

    The hunter's companions were not sitting idly by feeling sorry for the old hunter.  They continued to tear more snow geese from the blue sky above the rock pile.  The old hunter fiddled with his magnum 12 gauge.  When his diagnostics were completed, he took out a key and pressed it against the base of the broken ejector spring. It slid below the ejector so that it could close.  The hunter was ready to take more geese, albeit with only one shot.

    But, by now, most of the morning action was over.  It was about 8:30 A.M. on a bright, unseasonably warm Canadian morning on the 27 th of October.  A half-hour later, the old hunter made a nice single shot on a flaring snow goose.  It was his last kill of the morning. 

    The fellas had done very well that morning. It was their last of four days of trying to outsmart the snow geese.  Until that day, it was a close contest.  The hunters had won two previous rounds but had nearly been skunked one day.

    They began their Canadian quest early on a Saturday morning in the Twin Cities.  The old hunter was out of bed at about 4:00 A.M. that day.  He picked up his sharpshooting companion and then traveled to the outskirts of the Twin Cities to pick up his brother-in-law.  They planned to dump the old Explorer and transfer the trailer and equipment to the brother-in-law's pickup.  All the equipment was transferred and they were ready to go.  They plugged the trailer lighting wires into the pickup's connection. 

Nothing.

    Wiggle, wiggle.  Nothing.  Panic began to overtake the brother-in-law.  He fiddled in vain with the trailer light connection.

    The old hunter was impatient.  He was not going to sit around waiting to do time consuming wiring diagnostics at 5 o'clock in the morning.  He'd been through that before.  “Switch ‘em,” he barked at his companions.  They tore all their stuff out of the pickup and crammed it back into the Explorer. 

    The old guy was pissed.  But, they were on the road.  He hoped the old Explorer with the questionable transmission and clanking, sticky valves would make the twelve-hour drive  to Saskatchewan.  He was not entirely sure it would.

    The Waveytrain (white Explorer and white trailer) crawled through North Portal, SK at about 3:30 P.M. later that Saturday.  The hunters were a little behind schedule because the old Explorer towing a decoy trailer did not have the power to buck the northwest wind and sustain a speed of 70+ miles per hour without the engine racing far above the preferred 2100 RPMs. 

    They eventually reached their first night's destination.  It was a poor place for goose hunting.  The beds were extremely hard and there weren't many geese.

    They decided quickly to scout their backup location about an hour away.  Bonanza.  The geese were found that Sunday.

    The three Minnesota hunters ate their Sunday lunch in the small town café out on the main highway.  The service was mediocre and the food worse.  They poured over their Rural Municipality maps that they had obtained the year before.  They refreshed their collective memory of the landowners and major roads.  They made sure their cell phone was fully charged so that they could call the landowners for permission later in the afternoon.

    Though they knew it was too early in the afternoon for the birds to be off the roost, they drove around searching for wayward geese anyway, much to the delight of the local gas station proprietor who was getting 99.9 cents (Canadian) for a liter of gas ($3.23 per gallon U.S).

    The hunters focused their attention in the direction of the roost as they poked around the countryside.  Just after 4:00 P.M., the roost exploded and the hungry snows and blues began leaving in long, wavy strings.  Some of the bird's targeted fields north of the roost and the others went southeast about three miles out.  They were easy to follow. 

    The hunters drove a ways and then used their binoculars to ascertain the direction the high-flying geese were headed.  Some of them looked like they were headed for Devils Lake, ND.  While doing their scouting, the Minnesotans encountered two other hunters doing the same.  One was driving a white Suburban with Minnesota plates that raised a tunnel of dust as it passed.  The other was one of the local outfitters that they had met the year before.  He stood beside his pickup and watched thousands of snow geese pile into the fields a half mile down the gravel road.  It was amazing how he remembered exactly the conversation from the year before and the field the visiting hunters had selected.  The hunters were also impressed with how cordial and helpful the outfitter was even though the hunters had no plans to use his services.  The outfitter informed the hunters about the behavior of the birds and in which fields they had been feeding. 

    The hunters watched the ravenous snow geese lick a pea field clean and then fly across the road into a lentil field.  The hunters decided that the lentil field would be theirs for Monday morning.  Permission was gained by driving to the driveway of the landowner.  The lady of the house was just heading out for a post-dinner walk and granted them permission to hunt. 

    The three Minnesotans were almost done putting out their decoys at 6:15 on Monday morning when headlights approached them from the west.  “Oh, oh.  Looks like a little competition,” the old hunter yelled to his two companions who were out amongst the Northwinds.  There were two young fellas in the cab of the pickup that had Minnesota plates.  The driver was from Brainerd and the passenger from East Bethel.  They also wanted to hunt the field, but realized that they were a little late.  They wanted to know where they might set up so as to not interfere with the old hunter's spread.  The old hunter pointed directly out the passenger side window and said to go about 400 yards in that direction.  They did.

    The “kids” got about 15 birds that morning while sitting in white coveralls amongst about 140 decoys.  Old hunter's group was very impressed with the way the young fellas came up and talked to them about where to set up instead of making the mistake of down winding them. 

    The old hunter's spread of 400 decoys consisted of windsocks, Last Looks, and homemade tin decoys that looked like white cones with black tail feather markings. The two parties pulled about 45 geese from the adjacent fields on Monday morning.  The wind had been significantly more than the local cable TV outlet predicted the night before.  It had helped put life into the decoy spread. 

    Tuesday was a bad day.  Not only was there no wind, but the old hunter had guessed wrong on the X .  The birds stopped a half-mile short of the Minnesotans' decoy spread.  The limp windsocks did nothing to attract the geese after the first flight.

    Wednesday was better, but far below expectations.  The most satisfying aspect of Wednesday's hunt was that the three Minnesotans with their rag-tag set of decoys outdid the party led by the guy in the white Suburban that had also been seen in the area on Sunday looking for geese.

    Old hunter's party talked for awhile the night before with the guy in the white Suburban that was now towing a 22' enclosed trailer with a thousand windsocks and 400 full-body Flambeau decoys.  He was out scouting for his party of 8.  The 8 hunters were “preferred customers” of the Suburban's driver.  He revealed that this was his third trip this fall from the Twin Cities to Saskatchewan to hunt snow geese.  He still had one more trip planned to give his customers the thrill of shooting some snow geese.  If they got some, there was another trailer awaiting that had cooling capacity for 360 geese! 

    The Suburban's driver functioned as an outfitter.  He made the hotel arrangements, scouted the fields, and provided the decoys and blinds.  He seemed to be patronizing the locals by wearing a “Canada” hat and a T-Shirt with a big red maple leaf.

    The three Minnesota freelancers were not impressed with Mr. Bigshot's operation.  They talked about whether Mr. Bigshot could be defined as a guide or outfitter.  If he fell into that definition, he was probably breaking the law because only Canadians could be guides. 

    Or at least that's what the freelancers thought.  They were a little pissed that the area where they were trying to scratch out some geese had now been found by this kind of operator.  They had purposely stayed away from the heart of the Quills to avoid just this kind of environment.  They did not want any part of rogue guides or corporate fat cats trying to thrill their customers all for the purpose of improving business back home.

     So, it was satisfying to compete with the fat cats and outdo them on Wednesday morning.  The fat cats did poorly and did not return on Wednesday night to compete with the old hunter and his two freelancing companions. 

    The three Minnesotans had the Saskatchewan wheat, barley, pea, and lentil fields all to themselves that night.  The geese came to the fields in astounding numbers. The hunters “put the birds to bed” and used their GPS unit to mark the exact location in the field where they would set up on their last day of hunting. 

    The birds returned the next morning to the field with the big rock pile.  The three Minnesotans sat alone on this marvelous expanse of Saskatchewan prairie except for the thousands of geese that swirled overhead.  If the old hunter had not broken his gun that morning, they surely would have picked up another six geese to reach their daily limit. 

    On their return home to the Twin Cities, the three Minnesotans reflected on what they had seen in the past week on the Saskatchewan prairie.

• Lots of birds
• Gracious Canadian landowners
• Two young Minnesotans who had traveled for the first time all the way to Canada to hunt snow geese.  The guys had a ball with just 140 decoys and white camo-suits.  Old hunter and his companions agreed that these are the kind of snow goose hunters that can grow in skill and carry on the tradition of freelancing.
• A corporate led expedition to give preferred customers the thrill of shooting snow geese. 

    The old hunter and his two companions hoped that they would meet the two young guys again and that the corporate expeditions would just go away.

Perry Thorvig