I took a half day off on Friday to do a little goose hunting with my nieghbor. We finally picked up some land right near our house and didnt have to drive an hour to hunt. Which was very nice. We've been watching the resident geese pile into a 80 acre field right next to the propoerty where we got permission. The owner of that land said he liked watching them too much to allow us to shoot. Our new property is mostly wooded but has two 6 acre fields split by a hedge row. I thought we MIGHT have a chance at maybe pulling a few singles or small groups. So we gave it a try. We got set up with a dozen FB's and two dozen shells, and sat, and sat, and sweated in the heat. It was 83 that day and man is a layout blind hot in the sun. The geese had been trading in and out fo there all day just previous to our hunt. Not Friday. They waited until 5 to start moving. A few went into the big field and my hopes got even lower. We all know how hard it is to comepete with live birds next to you. We had a flock skirt the back corner of our field. A little flagging and light calling and they locked their wings and banked right into our spread. I couldnt believe it. After all that waiting we had 40 geese finishing at our feet!! I shot a double and my buddy got one. This was his first hunt from a layout blind. He got tangled up in the thing and had some trouble getting used to it. About 10 minutes later we had another flock do the same thing. In they come and he got a double this time and I got a single. After that the birds were heading to the roost and not hitting the fields. It was a great hunt, and my friend's first canada geese. He's shot hundreds of snows in the jersey marshes but never canada geese. So it was a great day. We hope to get back on them after work one day this week.
Here's my take.