Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Spring Snow Goose Hunt

Here in Pennsylvania, we are about midway through our Spring Snow Goose Conservation Season. With the warmer temperatures finally melting the snow on the ground, snow geese have finally been migrating up from the south in large numbers. During my daily scouting routine, I have seen snow goose numbers go from about 5,000 birds up to 45,000 or so over the past 10 days. With those kind of numbers in the area, myself and a few good friends decided to team up and put out a nice size decoy spread in hopes of getting a tornado of snows to touch down on us. We put out close to 1,100 decoys, about 800 sillosocks and 300 or so rags, and also had 2 e-callers running. Hopes were high as the sun came up as everything about the morning just seemed perfect. At last here they came....just when we expected them. Wave after wave of snow geese just filled the sky around us. Within minutes we were surrounded just waiting for the first birds to get within range. Well those minutes turned out to be hours as the last of the flocks flew out of sight. Seven hunters and only one bird to show for, yep I can hear the laughter. We had three hours of sky filled action but couldn't get more than one bird to get within range. What did we do wrong? I know, the list could be endless, but we will never know. In the end, we didn't leave with much meat, but all seven of us have a memory that will last a lifetime of snow goose tornado's and their high pitched barks.

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