Day 1 - what a crazy experience, the guys met us early and we were all hunting together we had 8 hunters and 1 wife/observer of one of the hunters. They said come prepared to shoot ducks early and then geese. Well it almost went like that but the geese showed up WAY early!
We had an early flight come in land and of course leave before shooting light. With the moon you could easily identify several mallards and pintails in the bunch. Well here we are shooting light small group came in i think we shot 4 out of the 6 that came in, I shot a big mallard drake shown in the pick. He was a beauty and drake pintail that was awesome. As we were reloading waiting for the next group of about 8-10 birds coming in he said oh shit here come the geese, we let the group of ducks land hoping the 50-60 geese behind them working would come on in. These guys (3 guides) worked these birds within 100-150 yards 4 different times and they just wouldn't crack the shot distance. Buy the time they officially left us the group and grown to well over 100 birds, loud and the adrenaline was pumping in the group. This would not be our last experience with close encounters but it would be a familiar trend they just wouldn't commit to the decoys or shootable range in the morning. We did have a small flight of 6 come in and we killed 4 of them. Couple more single and double ducks came in and we picked them up. We could tell it was going to be a long day, if half the birds would have committed we should have easily limited out in a 2-3 hours. But we were setting around about 11:30 the head guy comes over and says look If yall wanna take a mid day break your welcome too but I know the birds will be back they have been here everyday for the past week and we've held this spot for this group. We all decided to ride it out, we would get up and stretch. About 12:30 we were concerned a bit about grub, never fear the Oklahoma boys had pizza delivered! LOL the showed up with about 6 pizzas and we ate like it was the last supper! At 1:30 half the group took a break to run and get more goose shells and potty break by the trucks parked well off the on the road.
The setup was a 2-3 acre pond between two very large wheat fields which the birds were landing in all morning feeding. Just after the group who took to the truck and half the guides with them, we were sitting there 4 of us and 1 guide here comes a group of about 25-30 birds cupped and committed, wow this is what it's supposed to look like! They came in picture perfect, he called the shot about as the group of lesser's were to the decoys and we let it rain. Ended up with 6 confirmed geese, my oldest sons red lab "REBA" had never retrieved geese until that day that was fun to watch as she is just a natural "in training" retriever. The back story is the guide/outfitter is who he purchased her from a year ago. So it was cool watching him work with tyler and reba on educating them both. Guides allowing clients to bring green dogs is saying something most do not have the patients.
Weather for the day was a cool 38 degrees with wind 18-20 with gusts up over 35, it was some hard hunting.
That afternoon we saw so many geese we had one group buz us that you couldn't hear your neighbor screaming in your ear if you wanted too. One of those was it 1000 or 2000 birds in groups of 150-200 was just unreal for someone who had never goose hunted. We ended up the day with a modest 12 goose count and probably 6 ducks.
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