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The Miseries of the Spring Snow Goose Hunter
HuntingSnows.com The 2006 spring snow goose hunting season is just around the corner – at least for some of you. I look at spring hunting with ambivalence. On the one hand, it sure would be nice to be out there again – mud and all. There is nothing more fun than watching snow geese that are fooled by a decoy spread. It’s even fun to watch the ones that aren’t, so long as I get SOME shooting action. But, I’ve never had much fun, or success, during the conservation season. Certainly, nothing like the last three fall seasons. Yes, I know that there can be fun without hunting success (measured in the number of birds in the bag). But, it sure is a lot more fun when there is some reward for the effort, rather than a big gasoline bill and some useless bonding with my hunting partners. I am baffled by the spring season. I should be more successful during the spring hunt. I certainly have enough snow goose hunting experience. Or do I? The spring season has only been around since 1998. That really isn’t that long ago and it is a whole different way to hunt than in the fall. So, maybe I am still rather inexperienced when it comes to spring goose hunting. Maybe the way that I prefer to hunt is the reason spring snow goose hunting has been so frustrating. I confess. I am a field decoy hunter. I do not lie in the ditches. I do not emulate the coyote and crawl across a field hoping to sneak the birds. I do not hunt with eight or ten other cowboys and try to corral the geese. I don’t have a pond reserved for me where I know the geese will land after a tiring northern flight. I’m a freelancer and don’t use guides. As each season passes, I have learned that there are others who are pretty darned successful at spring decoy hunting and think that it is actually easier than fall decoy hunting in some parts of the country. This is especially true in North Dakota where it is more likely that the spring migration will stall out and there can be a lot of water to scatter the birds. But, one can’t just show up with some decoys and hope to be successful. Let me just describe some of my spring misery so you see what I mean when I say that the season has not been particularly good to me. Here’s how the spring seasons have unfolded for me. Tony Toye and the other outfitters out there are going to love me for writing this story. (I should post their phone numbers at the end of the story. But, I won’t.) 1999 - Disaster My first spring season was in 1999. My usual snow goose hunting buddies like to go to Mexico about the fourth week in February and are not available to hunt. So, I arranged a hunt over the Internet with two guys from Denver and a nice young fella from the Grand Island, Nebraska area. I didn’t know them except for some Internet chatter. It was a disaster! It was like a blind date. You never know what you are going to get. What I got was a novice that thought he knew how to snow goose hunt. He and his partner had just made up some decoys and were ready to kill some geese. Or, so they thought. I left Minneapolis in a snow storm and drove for two hours in the early morning darkness until it got light around Mankato. I arrived in the Hastings, Nebraska area early enough to scout the fields that I had hunted the year before during the fall season. Sure enough, there were plenty of geese right where I thought they would be. I even saw two guys “cowing” some birds that afternoon while scouting. I got a field lined up. The Denver guys arrived in town late that night. We were joined by the Grand Island hunter the next morning. (He turned out to be a good guy.) Things started to go sour right away. The first flocks came in and hung up there just out of range. Twenty years of hunting snow geese told me that they were not going to come in. The other guys didn’t have the experience of knowing what was happening to them. They had hopes of the birds dropping down. I yelled, “might as well give em a try and test the range of your guns.” We all blasted away and got nothing. I wasn’t surprised. But, what are you going to do? The Denver boys didn’t like me for calling that shot. They began to doubt my leadership. Since we were set up a little too far apart for one guy to call the shots, I told the guys that if the birds came over, and they thought they might be in range, to fire away. Each of us would have to use individual judgment. That turned out to be a problem. We all view the world, and its geese, a little differently. Then, the wind shifted on us and I was downwind of the other three guys and had the first shots at the birds. When the birds got straight over my head, I fired. I told them to move their blinds, but they felt cozy where they were and refused to move. None of us had low profile blinds and it was kind of a hassle to move. They didn’t get many shots and resented it. I thought, “Well, if they don’t want my advice and are too dumb to move, that’s their problem.” But, it wasn’t “their” problem, it was “our” problem. We should have worked out a satisfactory solution. About mid-afternoon, I left the decoy spread to scout and see where the birds were going. I thought I was doing those guys a favor. I lined up a couple more fields. I got back to the spread about 6 p.m., about a half hour before sunset. The guys had shot six birds or so while I was out scouting. I was sincerely glad they got some shooting. After some discussion, we decided to leave the decoys out in the field and come back the next morning rather than tear down the spread in the dark. (I would never do that again in the spring time.) The next day, the wind throughout the morning. Again, I wound up downwind of the rest of the guys. The guys refused to move their blinds and were out of position again. They resented that I shot a half dozen geese and they didn’t get any. (Hey, they got all the birds the day before while I was out scouting for us. Now it was my turn!) I also told them to quit wildly waving their 8-foot pole flag when the birds were committed to the decoys. I thought they were flaring geese. They said the technique had worked the day before while I was away from the spread scouting. More tension. Finally, late that afternoon, the Denver alpha, expressed his disgust with me. He didn’t appreciate the fact that I left them alone the day before to go scout and while I was gone they shot some geese. They didn’t like that I wanted to get my share of shooting that second day. He also didn’t like it when I told him to stuff his flag. He said, “Well, dude, we’ve had it with you. We’re not hunting with you any more!” I was flabbergasted. The divorce was final! I picked up my decoys without saying another word. I had planned to hunt another day. However, I was so pissed at the two Denver guys that I left for home the next morning and cut my trip short. I’m sure the feeling was mutual. But, they had each other. I was by myself. It was two against one. They went over to Beatrice and hunted some more. I drove home to Minneapolis. It was a bad start to the spring season for me.
2000 – Redemption I made sure I had a hunting companion the next spring. Jerry Vandelac, my former work associate, made his first goose hunting trip with me. We met our friend Jeremy from Grand Island from the year before. There was mutual benefit to this partnership. Jeremy didn’t have any decoys. Jerry and I had those. But, Jeremy had access to a nice pond and a spring wheat field. That’s something Jerry and I didn’t have. Jeremy, I, and my dog Kirby jumped into Jeremy’s permanent above ground blind on top of a six foot dam holding back a small pond. Jerry made a blind from some downed limbs and branches down by the pond. The geese could be heard a half mile away on the Platte River getting ready to take to the air for their morning feed. Shooting time was only five minutes past when it seemed like every bird on the Platte River rose at once into a bluish-purple sky. They headed straight for our pond. Jeremy switched on the e-caller. The massive cloud of birds including snows, Canadas, and sand hill cranes approached us and stalled out right our 400 decoys. The roar of the birds was deafening. This was Jerry’s first experience goose hunting. He could not believe what was happening. I couldn’t either and I had been hunting geese for 25 years. The birds circled us for several minutes. But, they were looking for breakfast, something we couldn’t give them. We got a few dummies from the huge swarm, but the bulk of the flocks headed out to feed. We waited for a couple of hours and got a few birds short-stopping after feeding rather than going all the way back to the river roost. During the slow time in those two hours, Jeremy told me that he had hunted the weekend before with my 1999 “buddies” from Denver. He told me that they had admitted to him that I might have been right the year before. They had learned the importance of being set up correctly in the spread and that snow geese don’t usually make low approaches to a decoy spread like the honkers that they hunted most of the time in northeastern Colorado. They also learned that if you want to shoot snow geese, you are going to have to take some high shots. I felt some degree of redemption. The next morning we decided against the pond in favor of a setup in corn stubble just downwind from a spring wheat field. We got some shooting early and then waited all day until we shot three dumb Ross Geese a half hour before sunset. It was a long day. It was a long drive home the next morning given the number of geese we shot. 2001 – Total Bust. Never Fired a Shot Speaking of long trips, the 2001 season was the absolute worst in terms birds per mile traveled. That year we took two trips. One was to northwestern Missouri and the other to South Dakota. Jerry and I had planned to go to Nebraska again that spring, but the weather was very unusual. The snow kept the Rainwater Basin soggy. Most years, the Rainwater Basin is the place to hunt because it has one helluva lot of geese and the snow usually melts within a week after falling. So, the fields are usually dry and accessible by the decoy hunter. But, not so that year. We altered our plans and decided to explore Mr. Tony Toye’s territory in northwestern Missouri. But, spring was late around Mound City and there was virtually no open water for the birds to roost. There were reports that there were birds between Kansas City and St. Joe. We did see some flocks leaving the reservoir, but could not get a fix on them because of the hilly terrain and winding rural roads that follow the terrain rather than a predictable grid. Just because you can see the birds flying in that part of the country doesn’t mean that you can find your way to them. It ain’t North Dakota! So, we never could find a good location. We dragged our decoys into a field with miniature volcano-like craters caused by the frost leaving the ground. Jerry got one bird. I never fired my gun. Two weeks later, winter’s icy grip had loosened and the migration had moved into the Yankton, South Dakota area. Internet reports allowed us to leave Minneapolis and drive right up to the birds by 11:30 a.m. on a Friday morning. There were birds in the sky and on the ground, but it was muddy! Jerry and I hit the migration’s leading edge and there were huge flocks of geese everywhere. It was frustrating because just when we thought we had one good field, we found another. This was the first time that we encountered the “coyotes” of spring goose hunting, the run and gun boys, and the cowboys. They had traveled from Minnesota like us, and Wisconsin, and Iowa. They were everywhere. Geese rarely sat in a field for more than a few minutes before the coyotes began to jump from their vehicles and start their mostly futile stalks. We tried a couple of different spreads that weekend. But, decoy hunting was also futile. We sloshed through the mud while carrying a few decoys into a field with a little pond on one day and froze in 16 degree temperatures the next morning. That was tough hunting. Our low profile blinds were the only thing that kept us from dying. We left South Dakota without firing a shot. My appetite for spring goose hunting was starting to diminish substantially. I don’t get a big rush from shooting 20 birds with one shot as do the coyotes. However, I hadn’t learned how to successfully decoy those white birds in the variable spring conditions. I knew that I would just have to keep experimenting to get it right or go to Mexico on vacation that time of the year with my fall hunting buddies.
2002 – Busted Again In 2002, it was not the coyotes that ruined our hunting, it was the mud. Long-time hunting companion, Mike Ferber, and I made our first attempt at snow goose hunting in North Dakota. I picked up Mike in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota and headed west. There were reports of birds south of I-94. We thought we would give it a spin in the Jamestown area. We explored several possible locations. Mike, who is a coyote at heart, tried a sneak. I just stayed warm in the car and watched for a half-hour as he sneaked along the edge of some cattails trying to get close enough to a good sized flock of feeding birds to get a shot. He didn’t get close to em. Their sharp eyes detected him and they flew off down the field a half-mile. We scouted some more that Friday afternoon and found a possible field. We got permission and went back to the field just before sunset to find the exact spot to set up the next morning. I had driven along the ridge crest of the field earlier when it was light and the field seemed drivable. However, my second trip into the field in the waning daylight took me on a different path. I skirted the side of the hill instead of the ridge top. The sensation was like breaking through the ice. All of sudden, there was absolutely no traction. I could feel us slowing down. I stepped on the accelerator. Nothing happened. We had driven into a hillside spring. It had invisibly soaked the side of the hill. We got stuck in the early darkness at about 7:00 p.m. I could see us in there all night long. One farmer’s pickup, the farmer’s tractor, and a huge front end loader were needed to get us out of the field. We felt very lucky and privileged to pay the farmer’s nephews $80 to get us out of there by 10 that night. We went to town and spent another $15 for a jug. We went to the motel and got happy. We got so happy that we didn’t get up in time to hunt the next morning. After a good breakfast at the Jamestown Perkins, where we watched countless strings of geese pass north over I-94, we went back out to the field to see if we had left anything out there the night before. We found one of the farmer’s tow chains and returned it to him. Our enthusiasm for hunting was gone. We wanted no part of the thawing North Dakota prairie. The snow geese could have it to themselves. We headed home skunked again.
2003 – Pass I still remembered 2002. No thanks.
2004 – Bad Timing - Hot, Windy, and Skunked The 2004 season was just the opposite of 2002. We went to the Rainwater Basin in Nebraska rather late for that area – mid March. We were looking for dry fields. The fields were dry as a bone. As a matter of fact, we got caught in the field where the farmer decided to test his irrigation pivot. He didn’t turn on the water. But, he did test the pivot to see if it would go around the hub. It did. It also went right through the middle of our decoy spread. We had to clear a path in front of the pivot arm wheels to make sure that the wheels did not crush any of our decoys. I did fire a couple of shots on Sunday morning, but got nothing. I vowed, “Never again.” The coyotes (the human ones) can have all the damned geese they can shoot.
2005 – Pass Last year, we didn’t bother going out. However, there were some encouraging reports of good decoy hunting late in the season in North Dakota. Hmm. It appears that the late migrating birds were not that wary. The reason? The experts say that those late flocks are mostly non-breeding juveniles that still haven’t learned their lesson about decoy spreads.
2006 – Maybe Maybe I’ll go hunting this spring and maybe I won’t. There is one characteristic of the true snow goose hunter. The fire never goes completely away. The embers continue to burn. That feeling is somewhat similar to what my 82 year old father-in-law feels about golf. He can hardly walk and can’t see a golf cart 30 yards away. He didn’t play at all last season. But, he has been feeling much better the last few weeks after his medications were changed. He is talking about playing some golf this summer. His golf fire hasn’t gone out. I also am thinking about trying to be a smarter snow goose hunter this spring. I might see you out there! Or, I might not. |