Category Archives: goose hunting

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On the Lanyard: Goose Call Edition

Image July 25, 2015 Shawn West Leave a comment

In the years since I became an “independent” (read: unaccompanied adult) hunter, I have accumulated goose calls at a near staggering rate. I’m not on the level of calling myself a collector yet, only because I define a collector as someone who owns more of something than they could conceivable utilize.

I’ve conversed with goose call manufacturers and collectors, as well as men and women with dozens and dozens (and in a few cases, over a hundred) of goose calls, and even they admit that there is no way they could possibly hunt with them all. Some are showpiece or limited edition calls, others just calls that look nice on a mantle, while others still are ‘working calls’ that sound exceptional and see their share of time in the blinds, fields, pits, and swamps that we waterfowlers frequently skulk about in.

To date, all my calls have been ‘working’ calls, and both through the expansion of my goose calling abilities, as well as through necessities of space and finances, I’ve been turning my inventory of calls over these past twenty years by selling or trading older calls for either newer calls themselves or more frequently, for the capital required to purchase more goose calls. I’ve owned several styles, tried dozens more, and from my Dad’s wooden Olt call, through to my current tools I could tell stories and share tidbits about them all; many of the older calls that I have not traded or sold sit in my gun cabinets and ammo lockers, or hang dusty on lanyards in my closet. With all that said, this piece is going to focus on the three calls that will be residing on my lanyard this coming September. All opinions here are my own, and the companies listed below have not had any contact with me regarding their products with respect to these reviews.

Super Mag

The first truly ‘custom’ short reed goose call I ever owned was my Super Mag. It has been the last thing a lot of geese have heard since I started using it in 2005. For years before I made the plunge into the custom acrylic short-reed market, I had been honing my skills on a variety of goose calls, from polycarbonate short reeds bought for $25 at the local hardware store to more elaborate flute-style calls bought online. Those calls were important in learning how to run a goose call and to make the requisite sounds needed for hunting, but they all lacked ‘something’. Some did not have enough high-note snap to be effective on windy days, while others lacked precision and realistic tone on the low moans and lay-down calls needed to finish geese close in.

The second I took the Super Mag out of its package, I could tell it had three things going for it. First, it was sexy looking, with a polished silver band wrapped around amber acrylic that shared its colour with a well-aged bourbon. Second, I could tell that it was solidly made by someone who hunted geese; simple minimalist lines fit comfortably in the hand and it was well-balanced. Third, and most important, it sounded like a real goose. For the first time I had a call that could flat out scream on a windy day, but was subtle enough to work low end moans and growls for when the birds were just about to commit.

It took a lot of practice to re-learn how to blow a short-reed goose call, but luckily it also came with a cassette tape (it was 2005 after all) with instructions from Tim Grounds and his son, Hunter. If it had a downfall, my only complaint about the Super Mag was that it took (and still does take) a lot of air to get it running correctly. The reed is set up quite stiff, and while this does make for absolutely realistic low end calling and crisp, snappy honks and clucks, you need to work hard if you need to run it consistently for a long time. That said, Tim & Hunter Grounds will custom tune any call you send them, and I won’t ever forget the day I came home from work and found a message from Tim himself on my home answering machine. I had sent my call to them because I had managed to crack the reed near the end of the 2010 hunting season. That evening I was like a star-eyed fanboy when I called him back and we talked for ten minutes about the call and how I wanted it tuned with the new reed. The call has been money ever since, and I’m now obsessive about my reeds and ensuring they are taken of.

On a personal note, this call is still my go-to, both because you never forget your first and because it is just a blue-collar workaholic call. I have had bloody hands on it, it has been scratched and worn, I’ve used it on freezing winter mornings, and I even slammed it in a car door once. It has character and it still sounds great.

Tim Grounds Championship Calls

PO Box 359, 14331 Prosperity Road

Johnson City, Illinois

62951

Phone: (618) 983-5649

The Goose Noose

During the 2014 off-season, I resolved to get my hands on a nice wooden short reed goose call, primarily because we had taken to hunting water now and then and I felt that the acrylic Super Mag created an unwanted echo. I tried calls from Zink, Buck Gardner, and RNT before I found this hidden gem at my local (and newly-opened) Cabela’s store.

From the second I started blaring on it in the aisles at the store, I noticed that it had a dimension that my Super Mag did not have. It was mellow, smooth, a little bit understated but truly goosey, especially on the moans and low end calls. It still could run at some pretty high volumes, but while the Super Mag could plead and scream with ease and only worked the nice low end calls with some serious back-pressure, this call moaned and barked with less air and less back pressure, and even though the spit-notes and hail calls came out with a more mellow tone, it took a fraction of the air that my Tim Grounds call used.

I had not heard of Lynch Mob Calls before that day, so I went home and did a bit of research. Satisfied with what I found, the next day I was back buying the call, and I began obsessively practicing on it. I found YouTube clips, I looked for articles, and I ran it nightly. Lynch Mob Calls has since replaced this model with one they call the Game Over, so in a way I guess I do have a bit of a collector’s item on my hands.

What can I say about this call? It has great mid-to-low end tone and on calm days or over water it is deadly. After huffing for nearly a decade on my Super Mag it took some practice to scale back the airflow so that I did not overblow it on honk, clucks, or comeback calls, but once that was mastered this call runs slick, deep sounds that are ‘big goose’ all the way. I had more success with it in the later October and early November hunts, but even in the early September season it fooled resident Canada geese often.

Lynch Mob Calls

9032 Bay Creek Road

Erie, Michigan

48133

Phone: (734) 848-2501

www.lynchmobcalls.com

Shorty Express SS (Signature Series)

I spend a lot of time in the local BassPro Shops store, and for a long time I had coveted this call. It has clean, sharp lines, the polished band glows, and I flat out love the colour. I did not love that it was priced in excess of $180, and I tried it over and over again on multiple trips to the store in attempts to convince my fiscally-responsible side to make the impulse purchase. Every time I had to put it back. Then in 2014, I stopped in to BassPro on my way up to the early November deer hunt to pick up some scent eliminator for one of the guys in camp. On a whim I cruised by the duck and goose showcase, and I was taken aback.

The call was marked down to $45.99. I was sure it was a mistake. I located the floor staff and asked them to take a look in their inventory system. The price was correct, and they had one left. So I bought it. I was more or less done with waterfowl for the year and I was focusing on deer hunting from then out, but I noodled with it for the evenings in deer camp and then even more during the long cold lonely winter up here in Ontario. It fell out of use for the bulk of turkey season, but I picked it up again recently and have actually been so focused on it that I have not even picked up and practiced my other two goose calls.

The Shorty SS is a dark “mallard” acrylic and it just looks downright sexy. It has nice lines with a curvy, rounded barrel. The insert is a little narrow in the hand for my liking but it is not uncomfortable. In terms of its sound it falls in between the Super Mag and the Goose Noose for volume and tone. It makes solid goose-talk from top end to bottom end requiring just slightly more air than the Goose Noose, but almost any sound can be made using less back-pressure and expenditure than with my Super Mag. Being an acrylic call, I find that it has a tendency to slide into the ‘high’ end easily, so in the same fashion as the Goose Noose I have to use caution not to over blow it and cause it to ‘squeal’, but it barks and double-clucks like nobody’s business. I am very much looking forward to running this call on some of the resident Bruce County geese in six weeks.

Sean Mann Outdoors

555 Marlan Drive

Trappe, Maryland

21673

Phone: 1-800-345-4539

www.seanmann.com

goose hunting, hunting, take a kid hunting

Something Special

October 21, 2014 Shawn West Leave a comment

Something special happened on this past Thanksgiving weekend, and it was something I had been planning for the past five years.

In August of 2009, my first son was born and it was a distant wish at that time that one day I’d get to take him hunting with me. After all, not every son or daughter grows up to love the same things their parents love, and my wife and I had long previously agreed that neither of us were going to force our hobbies and pastimes on our kids.

As the years passed and my rubbery infant son became a rambunctious, energetic toddler, I made not-so-subtle attempts to ingrain a love of the outdoors and hunting into the boy. I provided duck and goose calls as toys, I tucked him under my arm as I watched hunting shows on TV and I often took him into the nearby county forests for nature hikes that, while not technically hunting trips, were always framed as such. I recall a distinct morning in 2012 when my son and I went twenty minutes up the road to a Halton Region county forest tract and walked the wide trails in a new fallen snow. I pointed out deer and rabbit tracks to him, and he made it a point to follow the prints as far as he could. He was beaming and laughing, and I was pretty sure that I had him on the right track.

My toddler son grew to become a small boy, one that was now imaginative and willful, and he began to express disappointment as a three and four year old that he couldn’t come with me to various goose, duck, deer, and turkey hunting trips. He pestered and asked constantly, crying and sulking when I would earnestly tell him he was too little and too young to participate. He had not yet learned even the basics of sitting quietly and he was well in advance of developing anything that a parent could characterize as ‘patience’. Some people, my wife specifically, accused me of not wanting to bring him along as a selfish gesture, thinking that I was concerned with my own success and the possible negative impacts a small, loud, mobile child would have on my hunting results.

The fact of the matter was quite the opposite. My primary concern was that my son’s first hunting experience should be one that was fun, in good weather, and surrounded by action and wild game. Deer hunting and turkey hunting can feature extended periods of inaction, and I certainly didn’t want my boy to think hunting was ‘boring’. At that moment I decided that when he reached his 5^th birthday I would take him on his first waterfowl hunt.

In my estimation, hunting ducks and geese is probably the absolute best way to bring a youth of any age into the hunting tradition. Game is usually active, and in the case of Canada Geese in my area, it is plentiful. For the most part, when the birds aren’t flying the kids can move around, talk, fidget, and generally just be kids. I also find that (my boys at least) really like the noise and commotion around waterfowl hunting, what with setting up and tearing down decoy spreads, the music of the duck and goose calls, waving of flags, and the frequent shooting. That said, hearing protection for young ears (and old ears too I would suppose) should be absolutely mandatory.

And so it was that on the October long weekend I went to bed too excited to so sleep. I remembered my first waterfowl hunts as a young boy and the impression that they made on me; to say I was feeling the pressure to provide a good hunt for my son would be an understatement. 5am came on early, as it usually does, and my alarm buzzed me awake. I was sharing a room at the farmhouse with my son, primarily because my wife didn’t want me to wake her or my other son (who is just a tender 2 year old). When I walked across the room and tapped him on the shoulder, he sprang to life, literally. He hopped out of bed and made for his hunting clothes with an energy that I don’t ever remember having. It was a somewhat chilled morning, and I went through the ritual layering of long underwear, multiple socks, and warm shirts twice in the farmhouse living room; once for my son and once more for me. It was not an emotional morning overtly; there were no clichéd moments of hair-tousling or teary smiles, or even hugs. We just got our equipment on and headed out the door.

Our large group of hunters met at a local gas station and planned the hunt. My son and I, along with three others would go to a nearby cut grain field that geese had been frequenting which was adjacent to a field of standing corn. The plan was to hide in the standing corn and go from there.

We set decoys under the waning moonlight of a rapidly approaching October dawn, and my son rambled around in the shadows, carrying Bigfoot decoys in an awkward but capable fashion. We found our spots inside the first few rows of standing corn, and thanks to a miniature folding seat that one of the hunters with us lent me, I had my boy comfortable and still as the starry night morphed into a calm, bluebird morning. Nothing was immediately flying, and we turned my son free to wander in with the decoys and down the line, where he asked questions and chatted with the other hunters. We spied a thin string of geese to the southwest, and my son scampered back to his hideout next to me. We flagged and called the geese into range, and as they worked another group of honkers fell into an approach behind them. The first group landed, and we worked the back flock, hoping to get them to commit.

Inexplicably, the back flock made it to within sixty yards or so and then slid off line and made for an exit. Simultaneously the group that had landed jumped up and began to depart. Far to my right someone called the shot, and I swatted the nearest departing bird. More shots rang out to the right and we had brought four geese to hand. I trotted out to the bird I had shot and brought it back to my hiding spot. My son hopped off his little seat and came over to inspect the goose, which was a good-sized bird. He asked if it was dead and he tried to pick it up; it was a just a bit too awkward and heavy for him to hoist, but he gave it a good shot. A few more groups came near and although we shot okay, it was a bit of a slow morning overall. But the tepid bird movement couldn’t dampen my spirits, and my son was buoyant to be out hunting. Eventually his small stomach pressed me to get him some breakfast, and the rest of the crew thought bacon and eggs was a solid plan.

Just as he had in the pre-dawn, James went to the decoys and started to haul them in one at a time, gripping them awkwardly and more than once he almost took a spill in the muddy field. I was smiling pretty much throughout, and it was certainly one of those ‘proud Dad’ moments that you don’t forget. He was all smiles too, and when I asked him if he had enjoyed the hunt he blurted out that he never wanted to stop hunting.

One of our hunting companions that day was GK Calls Field Pro-Staff member Scott McDonald, and after all the decoys were packed and the guns cased, he pulled out a knife and pried one of his several goose leg bands off his lanyard and gave it to my son. My son was a little shy and confused about what the band meant, but once it was explained to him he wouldn’t let go of it. I had an extra lanyard and a beginner duck call laying around, and it is safe to say that this memento has not been out of his sight in the week and a half since he received it.

So I guess I have him hooked.

That afternoon my son stayed in while myself and a few others hit a local cut cornfield and while we saw many birds, we just could not coax them to commit. One group of three strayed too close to my end of the setup and I scratched down two of them. We sat the field until the end of legal light, but that pair would be the only birds we would get that evening. When I arrived back at the farm, my son was pestering my Dad to go out in the morning for another hunt. I asked who he wanted to sit with and my son was adamant that he would sit the morning hunt with his Grandpa, so that was pretty cool. I had never had the opportunity to hunt with my grandfather, so this was another one of those special moments that only comes around once.

I mean how many ‘first’ hunts can there be?

The Sunday morning was a repeat of the Saturday morning; James popped out of bed energetically, we ate a quick breakfast and geared up, making the field in the pre-dawn. My son again helped out with the decoys but this time, instead of hunkering down in the grassy fence line with me, he walked down the field edge and disappeared into the grass with my Dad. The wind was up and it was markedly colder than it had been twenty-four hours earlier, and the birds flew earlier. We were standing up chatting when a group of three mallards buzzed the spread. No one fired a shot.

Shortly after that we flagged and called to a group of geese that swung wide past my friend Brian, but still within my friend’s normally lethal wheelhouse. He emptied his gun and all three birds winged away unscathed, which sometimes happens. While we tried to figure out how that had transpired we saw another group and we worked them down the other side of the decoys, right in front of my Dad and son. Dad reached out with his Remington 1100 and connected with one of the birds, folding it up instantly. When he retrieved it, we noticed that it was not just any run-of-the-mill small goose, but it was a Cackling Goose, a first for Dad in nearly fifty years of waterfowling. My son had no difficulty holding this one, and neither did his younger brother when we all made our way back to the farm later that morning.

We worked more birds and brought a few more to hand, with one winging away wounded before crash-landing in the next field over. My Dad took my son across the shallow ditch we were hiding next to, and they went on the retrieve. It was a convenient time to do so, as my son was getting a bit chilled and going for a walk in the sun perked his spirits up again. This retrieve marked the end of the morning and we once again packed the decoys and headed in for breakfast.

Over pancakes and bacon my son told me all about the hunt with his Grandpa, how Grandpa told him how to hunt geese, and how he helped his Grandpa find the goose that “ran away” as he put it. That afternoon my son and I crashed into blissful afternoon naps before enjoying the traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all the cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, grandparents, and friends. It was a fitting way to end the weekend, and it was an apt reflection of the passing on of family traditions to the next generations.

For my part it looks like I may never get to hunt geese alone again. My new hunting partner is already asking about going every weekend we can, and that suits me just fine.

goose hunting, hunting

Hunted Hard Makes for Hard Hunting

September 12, 2013 Shawn West Leave a comment

I’ve long held a theory that when there aren’t many of a given species of animal around, those animals in reality become easier to hunt. Harder to find, but once found, relatively simpler to hunt.

When early goose opened up, I got a text from a friend of mine that a crew of guys had been really putting the hurt on the geese in our preferred hunting area. Working them hard, shooting lots of them, and generally giving the geese a crash course in how to avoid decoys, calling, and putting a stack of pressure on them. For a long time, our crew was the group putting the heavy pounding on the geese, but with abundance comes competition. I’ve never minded a little bit of competition.

We stood out in the laneway until nearly midnight telling stories, laughing, and planning the day to come. It was warm and windy, but the morning forecast told of rain coming. Five o’clock came around awful quick and when I heard my alarm going off, the background noise outside was of pounding rain and rumbling thunder. A flash of lightning or two made me think of rolling over and snoozing away. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the gang was meeting in my kitchen, so I really had no choice but to suit up.

We stood in the kitchen in our gear watching rain teem down and we decided that we were going to brave the elements. At about the time we pulled into the field, the rain had basically diminished into a thin mist, but it was still grey and foggy as we put out the decoys, and as we hunkered down in the grass along a fence that separated a pasture field from cut canola we shot each other some worried glances. This was option “D” for us, and none of us were sure that the birds would co-operate. Those worries were put to rest in short order.

Within ten minutes of getting situated, a small group started winging directly our way. We hardly had to call them, and a few moans and soft clucks had the geese locked up and dropping in. We shot adequately, but did leave a long retrieve or two for ourselves. Every ten minutes or so for another ninety minutes they came in like that, and while our shooting (or at least mine) definitely had some early season rust on it, we put a dozen in the truck bed before 9am. The last group of the morning hunt made me especially happy. We were asleep at the switch and by the time we saw them they were floating down into the middle of a cut field on the other side of the road. Rory, Tack, and I got aggressive on the calling and, to my surprise the birds picked up and started climbing. They made a narrow clearance over the hydro lines next to the road and then started floating down again, this time about forty yards out from our ‘sweet spot’. With good work on the low end of the calls we drifted the group into range, taking down the last geese of our morning. A few photos and a celebratory meat-lovers omelet made me happy to be hunting again.

A dozen geese and a few happy hunters

L-R: Wayne, Rory, Tack, Jason, myself, Barry, (not pictured, Rob)

Feeling lucky, or foolhardy, those of us with layout blinds made a run on the same field for the afternoon. We set up more to the middle and heavily grassed in the blinds. Looking back at the blinds from our anticipated landing zone, I had to admit that they looked pretty fine.

Four hours and a couple of naps later, we had seen exactly one flock, and it had no interest of even looking our way, even though we flagged and called sweetly to them. It was one of the only times that I’ve ever hunted that the geese did not come off the water in the evening to go to the fields. One group to the northwest got one goose. Hardly any were flying at all.

The only plausible solution to such a fruitless afternoon hunt was to make the spiciest possible meal from some of the geese we had shot in the morning. Using fresh jalapenos, herb and garlic cream cheese, and browned cubed goose breast meat I presented my fellow hunters with a plate of cripplingly spicy deliciousness. They complained and moaned, but it all got eaten. Again it was nearly midnight when the lights went out and the stories stopped. Some of our intrepid cohort went into town for a wedding dance. None of that motley crew made it out for a shoot in the morning.

For those of us not inebriated, the next morning was significantly sunnier, but also crisper with a wind that blew hard and often from the northwest. We set up in gloaming light, but a blazing fireball rose above the horizon soon enough.

Now, I hesitate to read the mind of geese, but I can safely say we saw thousands of them that morning and almost all of them had not the slightest inkling of landing in our setup, which this time had us secreted away in a copse of trees found in the middle of a freshly cut grain field. When we stood in the shadow and overhanging limbs of the sparse trees we were as well hidden as one could ask. Unfortunately, as we stood about in the field edge talking on the subject of women (I think) three geese…the only three geese we saw that morning below an altitude of one hundred yards…checked our spread briefly and then departed upward. No one even managed a shot. The other 997 geese we saw that morning were all flying high, fast, and due south. No flagging, calling, decoys, or the prayers of us desperate heathen hunters seemed to interest them one iota. It was my hope that all the smart local birds were in that army of geese marching down the peninsula, because the way I’d been hearing it the flats we hunt had been shot hard for four consecutive days and it was getting such that even the most persistent hunters were tasting diminished success or outright failure. Geese hung back and circled at distances that would make the most shameless sky-buster blush. They were just being downright ornery and tough as hell to work. I had a walloping huge plate of bacon and eggs to drown my sorrows at being so handily defeated that morning by a bird with a chestnut-sized brain.

But despite the hard-slogging, we were hunting again and as we laughed and were cruel to one another’s failings and faults, it didn’t really matter how much we shot or didn’t shoot. There was a time when we valued our experiences in body count, but the bloom has been off that particular rose for some time now, and although I won’t speak for a goose, I think I can speak for my hunting chums when I say that we get a thrill from watching the birds work, from calling them in and seeing success in our set up, and from hamming it up with each other during the downtime. Since I know Rory reads this, I’ll pump his tires by telling the Internet that he’s a crack shot with a crab apple and that he’s fortunate I have a sense of humour. In two weeks we do it all again for geese and ducks, and this time with the added bonus of a new mourning dove season in our neck of the woods. I can’t say with certainty that we’ll have more success or less, but we’ll have a time trying and it may even breed a story or two for this medium.

Still, I hope to hell that the birds play nice for an afternoon or two, because I can only write about pretty mornings, food, and defeat so often.

goose hunting, hunting

Fits & Starts, Tinkering & Fixing…and then Waiting

September 5, 2013 Shawn West Leave a comment

With just a few short days remaining until I get into my goose season here in Ontario and with it the unofficial “start of fall” for me, I’m just pacing around the house like a tiger in a cage. I constantly wander around thinking about the upcoming hunt, planning for different weather contingencies, practicing my calling, and prepping and re-prepping my equipment. I can’t do anything productive, and since I can’t do anything productive, I’ll just write about it.

A couple of weekends ago I went all out. Using black potting soil I mixed up a few litres of mud and smeared them all over my layout blind. Then when the mud dried, I went out and swept it all off. Then I forgot that my blind was still deployed in my backyard and it rained on my blind for three days. Now my blind isn’t shiny and new looking, but it does smell like rain and mud, and it leaves dirty stains on my clothes every time I pick it up. Which are good things. There is also a blind-shaped patch of dead grass on my back lawn.

Once my blind dried in my garage for three days, I tightened up all the screws, oiled all the previously wet hinges, and sewed a couple of seams (that’s right I can sew). This sundry tinkering and busy work was a nice distraction for about two hours. Then I sat in the blind to make sure I hadn’t made anything worse with my brainless fiddling and my hunger to get out in the field tripled.

I packed all the gear, minus my gun and shells, in my car, and then was forced to unpack it to go buy groceries. Now I’ve packed it again and if necessary, my family can go hungry…because I’m not unpacking it again until it is time to put the equipment to use.

And put it to use I shall. I spoke with some buddies today and the prognosis for the hunt is good; lots of geese milling around, a good selection of places to set up, and a whole lot of competition for the fields we want to hunt. Since I have various and sundry goose hunting acquaintances, I have also been tantalized with pictures and stories of the various early season hunts they have been enjoying success with. Even my cousin sent me a picture of a short hunt they had on their opening morning. A smoldering desire to get out in the field is now a full blown inferno and it has made me so wretchedly unproductive that my career, marriage, and financial security are all in jeopardy.

Okay, so maybe not but you get the idea.

I had long hoped that this would be something that would improve as I grew older. As a much younger person I used to be literally unable to sleep, such was the anticipation, and this really didn’t pose much of a problem when the next day held nothing other than hunting, napping, and eating. But now I am nominally an adult, and as such I have responsibilities (or so they tell me). I am accountable to a boss, several dozen clients, and perhaps most importantly a spouse and two young boys. Shirking my duties because of hunting-anticipation-related-insomnia (which should be a clinically recognized condition, even though I just made it up) frankly isn’t an option. Yet, I think I have diagnosed why this condition has not only failed to cure itself, but is actually becoming more and more debilitating. It is because the frequency and duration of my hunting trips has become finite. As child and teenager, I could (with adult accompaniment) go hunting pretty much whenever a mentor could take me, which was honestly quite often and very much encouraged (with the exception of deer camp, that rite of passage was reserved for a later, more hotly anticipated date). Now, with the demands on my time being exerted by work and family, the prospect of time in the fields and forests is even more keenly anticipated.

I’m not from a particularly demonstrative family when it comes to emotions, but I feel as though my father, uncles, and other hunting mentors must have similar emotional responses to our family tradition of hunting. It is just that none of them had a forum such as this (or perhaps the inclination at all) to speak about such childlike giddiness.

But I don’t mind, because in some respects the expectancy and desire have become part and parcel with my hunting experience. Not only are the actual times spent in the field alone or with friends special, but the ways I pass the dreary days and weeks before hunting, what with all the toying with gear, and make the best laid plans, and yes even babbling inanely about how much I enjoy the anticipation, have all become part of the fabric of my hunting experience.

It is just what I do now.

So tomorrow, when 5pm rolls around, and the interminable meetings and prioritized tasks of my day job have been put mercifully to rest for another weekend then I will roll down the highway, listen to loud music, and practice train notes and push moans on my goose call every time I stop at a red light. Because those things are part of the hunt for me.

Then I’ll arrive at the farm and I’ll lay out my clothes and equipment in a utilitarian (and ever so slightly superstitious) fashion. Because those things are part of the hunt for me.

My cousins and hunting buddies will arrive and we’ll plan the morning’s agenda. We may have a beverage or two and we’ll laugh a fair bit. Because those things are part of the hunt for me and maybe it is for them too.

Then we’ll hunt, and we’ll eat, and then we’ll wake up and hunt some more. And then, when it is all done, we’ll have the memories and we’ll have the best laid plans for the next trip in just a few short weeks. The geese will be a little smarter and a little fewer (I hope) and we’ll be a little older, a little heavier, and a lot happier. And it is because we’ll be hunting together again, and that makes the anticipation, and the puttering around, and the all the mindless distractions we use to make ourselves happy in the off-season seem like distant foggy memories.

The return of hunting season just does that, and I am more than ready for it.