Category Archives: waterfowl hunting

goose calling, goose hunting, hunting, waterfowl hunting

Deferred Gratification, or, A Two-Truck Kind of Morning

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The concept of deferred gratification, in a psychological sense, is that if an individual’s mind can be trained to delay a small reward in the short term for greater rewards in the longer term then research seems to indicate that those individuals who can defer rewards to a later period are typically more successful later in life.

Now, I can only trust the research at hand, but last weekend’s hunting in Bruce County seemed to bear out that hypothesis.

Having a real job, instead of my fantasy job of one day being a kept man who just goes hunting all autumn long, I was forced to miss the opening day and, by extension, the opening weekend of the 2015 early goose season due to work commitments in Western Canada.  It isn’t the first time that’s happened and it probably won’t be the last time.

As I sat in the Calgary departures lounge I was ruing a missed opportunity.  Historically, that early opener weekend has been a good few days of hunting with good weather, good friends, and willing birds that had not yet developed a hyper-sensitive wariness to decoys, goose calls, and ground blinds.  Family and several friends had plans to be out in the fields with their shotguns, and the social media world was counting down to the opener with heavy anticipation.

As that opening weekend progressed I puttered around the house aimlessly, not really interested in cutting the grass, or getting groceries, or any of the other mundane things that needed doing.  My mind was in the goose blinds with my friends and I lamented all the action, laughter, and fun they were no doubt having.

My Twitter feed was full of men and women who were out hunting their respective early goose (and in some realms, teal) seasons and I was getting more and more antsy.  Finally, late on Sunday evening I texted one of the guys in our group for an update.

He informed me that they had shot two birds all weekend. I was slightly shocked.

I had plans to hunt the weekend of September 119th and 20th, which is the last weekend in our area before the goose season takes a five-day government-mandated hiatus, and I was worried by his report of slack shooting and limited suitable fields for hunting.  I texted my cousin and he echoed the sentiment, but he did say that several fields were scheduled to be harvested in the week ahead and that when I arrived there would be greater opportunities to get after the geese.

Then the weather took a turn for the worse.

I arrived to the farm the Friday before the hunt, and there was a 100% chance of rain forecast for Saturday morning.  Early in the season, our group has some shockingly fair-weather hunters in our midst.  Nevertheless I set an alarm and woke to the sound of rain hitting the farmhouse rooftop.  I still dressed and geared up, before texting my compatriots to see if they were down for getting a bit soaked in search of good shooting.  One of them never even replied (no doubt fast asleep to the soothing patter of late summer rain at his window) while the other fellow said he was staying in bed.

So much for that, I thought.

I was just about to undress and get back in bed myself when my uncle arrived and we decided to forge out into the damp for a hunt.

We settled on a huge field that was frequently holding birds, but not surprisingly, they skirted our setup and landed a few hundred yards away.  After a time, something got those birds off the ground (I still have no idea what it was that spooked them) and as their honks, clucks, and moans hit a crescendo, we flagged and called them our way.  They slid past me on the furthest distance of my range, but they squared up nicely over my uncle and he scratched down a double.  As he shot I swung at the trailing birds and sent them on their merry way with two shots that tore through the wind and drizzle but failed to connect with feather, flesh or bone.

One of the birds my uncle had shot was banded, and after a half hour of not seeing any more action we decided to dodge any more potential foul weather and headed home.  I registered the band with my cell phone and found that the bird was two years old, was banded near Ypsilanti, Michigan, and was too small to even fly when it was banded in June of 2014.  Bird band data is always interesting and puts the journey of these game birds into distinct perspective.

Two early-morning geese, one of which was sporting some jewellery.
Two early-morning geese, one of which was sporting some jewellery.

The weather steadily improved and after an early afternoon nap, I outfitted my six-year-old son and with renewed hope we headed for a field that my friend Brian had said was flush with birds earlier that day.

This spot did not disappoint.

As we walked in from the road, birds were already trying to land in the cut grain field, and after getting safely situated and inserting my son’s ear plugs I loaded up and the shooting began.  Handfuls of geese traded across the skies steadily for the greater part of three hours and many groups worked our spread and responded to our calling.  Eventually we decided it was time to go, but not before 23 geese were piled in the back of Brian’s pickup truck.  We cleaned geese by the glow of truck headlights and then we sat at the picnic table at the farm under the starlight, sipping some cold beers and reliving the hunt that had ended just a few short hours earlier.

My oldest son, and the geese from Saturday evening's hunt.
My oldest son, and the geese from Saturday evening’s hunt.

We planned a return to the same field the next morning, fully expecting to experience a fraction of what we had just been through.  We were wrong in a very good way.

Geese whispered distantly in the dark as we put out decoys and found familiar hiding spots trampled down from the previous evening’s hunt.  I checked my watch and settled in as legal light came and passed; it was not long before the shooting started in earnest.

A light breeze blew from the east while geese begin to wing their way around the Ferndale flats on the purples and burning oranges of a coming dawn sky.  I flagged and called, trying to sound enticing and entirely non-threatening, and before long birds swung wide out over the cut grain field before dropping their feet into our spread.  We opened up on them over and over again, and in more than one instance I was emptying my gun and immediately jamming more shells into it as line after line of birds seemed to make their way for our field.

Professionals call it “being on the ‘X’”.  I just call it unreal goose hunting.

Geese fell, feathers floated in the sky, and Brian’s dog Levi worked retrieve after retrieve.  All the while the pile of birds we were concealing in the long grass of the deep ditch that formed our blind grew and grew.  Rough counts began to tell the story of the morning.

25…more birds.

29…a few more were fooled.

31…I shot badly that go around, punching holes in the air with my 870.

37…A great group and some excellent shooting; six came in and not a single bird left.

When we reached forty birds in the bag, we had a chat down the ditch.  We decided on one more group and the birds promptly obliged by sending a good-sized flock over.  The guns of seven hunters barked again in a carefully orchestrated cacophony, and five more geese found their way to hand before we set down our arms and traded laughs, smiles and high fives.  We were done and Brian headed for the truck.  My cousin Lukas joined him, because this was going to be a two-truck kind of morning.

Seven hunters. 45 birds. One great morning.
Seven hunters. 45 birds. One great morning.

While we cleaned up, to a man we agreed that it had been one of the most memorable hunts we had been together for, and the weekend had seen a polar opposite of experiences from what had gone down just seven days earlier. In a way, it proved that waiting made things sweeter.

Still it was officially hunting season for me then, and the short week-long interval between that morning spent in the ditch and the morning that would kick off the opening of duck season on September 26th was going to drag by ever so slowly. Still, as I sat at the breakfast table that morning, a pile of decoys in Brian’s truck bed and lot of fresh goose meat waiting to be processed in the back of Lukas’, I was just basking in the afterglow of a fine morning spent afield.

duck calling, duck hunting, game calls, hunting, hunting gear, waterfowl hunting

Gear Review: RNT Short Barrel Duck Call

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The first duck call I ever ran was a wooden single reed Olt that my Dad gave me when I was eight.  I finished second in a youth calling contest with it in 1990, but then drifted away from duck calling and into other things during my juvenile and adolescent years.  When I dove headlong into waterfowl it was goose hunting that I fell in love with and while most of my disposable income has been funneling its way into goose calls (see the post previous to this for more on that), I’ve long been considering a solid, high quality single reed duck call for my lanyard.

The colours on this call are just gorgeous.
The colours on this call are just gorgeous.

For the last decade or so various average double reed polycarbonate duck calls have worked serviceably on my lanyard and names like Buck Gardner, Knight & Hale, Zink, and Haydel’s have had their chance.  They’ve been passable but not without limitations, and this week it was time to move into high-performance territory.

Now this is not to say the above brands were not good calls, and I’ve been particularly fond of my Red Leg mallard from Haydel’s and will likely keep it on my string, but after testing countless calls, I made the move to RNT, and specifically to a single reed Short Barrel in bocote wood.  The call is, in a word, impressive.  I tried other single reed calls in the RNT line in the lead up to this purchase and two weeks ago I found myself holding an acrylic Daisy Cutter and the bocote Short Barrel in my left and right hands respectively.  I was filling the local BassPro store with racket as I sawed away hail calls, single quacks, and feed calls on each one.  I ultimately settled on the Short Barrel for reasons I will explain below.  As always these are my personal findings and preferences and I’d encourage anyone to do what I did and try out as many calls from as many manufacturers until you find what sounds and works best for your style of calling.

As I said, RNT won the day on this one, and I’ll start by saying that their ‘brand’ definitely had a hand in this decision.  Located in the heart of (and some would the epicenter of) southern USA duck country, RNT operates out of Stuttgart, Arkansas which happens to be where the World Duck Calling Championships are held annually (in case you’ve been living under a rock for a while).  But more than their location, I’ve always respected their no-nonsense, non-gimmicky approach to waterfowling.  These guys just make duck calls and hunt ducks in a straightforward, no BS kind of way and that is appealing to me.

It doesn’t hurt that they churn out some of the purest-sounding duck calls on the market either, and the Short Barrel is no exception.

On first run, it was obvious that this was the call I had to have on my lanyard come this fall.  I have a lot of ‘loud’ duck calls so windy day range or aggressive hail calling was not something I was worried about; instead I wanted something a little more true sounding for close-in work and finesse, and that is something the Short Barrel has in spades.  The compact size and mellow sound of the wood puts a smooth edge on the mid-range and soft quacks, while feed calls roll out of this little call with ease.  It can still get loud, but not in that ringing, nasty-edged way that an acrylic call would be apt to.  The risk here is that when blown too hard, this call does seem to squeak and lock up.  In short it requires a lighter touch than I may be used to, so of course practice has been the key for the last few weeks.

The call is new but even now it is surprisingly responsive, so I’m chomping at the bit to hear how it sounds once I’ve broken bit in somewhat.  As it stands currently, this call descends down a five note scale cleanly, and changes speeds with only the most subtle variations in air pressure.  Speaking of pressure, absolutely no back pressure is required to run this call through all the sounds a hunter would require; the mellow tone of the bocote softens the feed calls and quacks nicely.  I have found that applying back pressure only muffles the resonance that the Short Barrel has naturally built into it.

The bottom-end sounds are mellow from the bocote wood, but the call can be charged up for aggressive calling as well.
The bottom-end sounds are mellow from the bocote wood, but the call can be charged up for aggressive calling as well.

Now of course, the sound is the key here, but it should be noted that the Short Barrel in bocote looks damn sexy as well.  The wood has a dark chocolate grain that runs through a caramel-colored body and the call is completed with a low-gloss band.  I have also always loved the smell of wooden duck calls and this one is no different; something about the smell of wood call takes me back to my childhood of learning to call ducks on Dad’s classic Olt call.

Since it is the off-season right now, the one part missing from this review is field performance, but that just means in a month or so I get to write about this call again, so that’s a plus.  In the meantime, I’ll just be sitting in the basement, practicing and rasping away on this new toy of mine and waiting for the October morning when I get to slide on my waders, find an out of the way spot in the long grass, and wait for the whistling of mallard wings.

When it happens, I think the Short Barrel will be ready for the spotlight.

duck calling, duck hunting, goose calling, goose hunting, waterfowl hunting

The Primacy of Waterfowling

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As with most things you’ve read here, what follows is a matter of opinion.  If you and I are similarly-minded, then I imagine we are not going to have too much to debate in the below ramblings.  If we are found to not share such ideals, then I defer to the time-proven axiom of “to each their own” and I can still share the field with you if you’d have me.

I haven’t hunted African plains game, and may never get the chance. 
I am a neophyte by most standards in that I possess less than a decade in the turkey woods, although I am a full convert to that particular aspect of our religion. 
My deer hunting experience is of less than a score of years, which is as much an accident of birth and the public policy at the time of my hunting certification as it is a function of my love of stalking the ghosts of the fall woods. 
Small game was once a deep passion, although a shortage of suitable hounds and a personal disinclination as I grow older to spend time in cold winds and deep snow has dulled my desire to chase grouse and rabbits.  Perhaps the acquisition of a sleek beagle may rekindle those fires, but for now they smolder low.
Moose hunting, while available, has always played second fiddle to deer hunting for me.
Predator hunting, while exciting and raw, often lacks the payoff of promised game meat for the eating.
Elk, bears of all fashions, antelope, and the like are all unavailable to me, for reasons of logistics, time, and finances respectively.
What the list above details are two things.  First, there is a literal glut of riches available to the North American sportsman.  Secondly, at least for me, is that all of the above opportunities finish behind the pursuit of waterfowl as the act that most defines my hunting experience.
My dad is a deer hunter.  He loves the ducks dropping in and the geese turning and cycling down into a set up as much as I do, but if you asked him what he’d rather be doing, he would say deer hunting every time.  I’ve had similar conversations with a couple of my cousins and friends and they all fall on the side of deer hunting, although there are a few that are fast becoming converts to the hallowed tradition of chasing wild turkeys.
Perhaps it is my instinctual desire to dissent from the group, perhaps it is my relative lack of success in killing deer and turkeys, or maybe, like the Grinch, my head isn’t screwed on just right.  Whatever the case may be, hunting ducks and geese tops my list of preferred hunting trips, although that’s a lot like trying to rate pizza versus ice cream versus sex.  I suppose you could prioritize them if you wanted to, but you really would never turn any of them down.  Hunting is like that.
Carrying on.
It is true that I love waterfowling above all else, and frankly, what isn’t there to love?  Sure the weather can be awful, but at the end of the day, you don’t have to go out in it if you don’t really want to.  Yet time and time again, a multitude of duck and goose hunters are out in the most tragically terrible weather, getting frost-nipped, wind-whipped, and generally cold, soaked and miserable.  And why is that, you ask?  Two reasons: first the ducks and geese don’t seem to care; in fact it seems that often the hunting gets better the worse the climate is.  But the secret, untold second reason is that waterfowlers need that lousy weather to make them feel like they are truly ‘hunting’.  Just as deer hunters need the fall colours and the cool in the air, and houndsmen need the bay of a dog to set the atmosphere, so it is with the men and women that chase after webbed feet and billed birds.  I’ve had good shoots on bluebird days, but the best ones that I recall had some pretty drizzly, damp and all around unpleasant weather.  It just made it ‘feel’ right.
Another niche that I fit cozily into when it comes to duck and goose hunting is the calling.  Although a strong argument can be made on behalf of a gobbler, few other animals respond to calling and decoys like waterfowl do.  All my life I have been intrigued by the language of animals (and languages in general, but that’s another story), and the way that hunting allows me to more or less ‘talk’ with ducks and geese is a thrill that I simply cannot get enough of.  Listening to the birds as they work, and watching their body language as they respond positively and negatively to the sounds you are feeding them is both education and exhilaration.  My favourite memory from calling waterfowl came on a breezy, cool, sunny day in late September.  Our camp group was working a small flock of about nine geese, and they were making wide circles as they eyed up our spread.  As they made what turned out to be their second-last pass, I made a low moan on my call, and to my astonishment, one of the geese mimicked it exactly.  Not similarly, not comparably, but precisely the same note, tone, and duration.  Naturally, I made the same call again (which may shock those of my friends who accuse me of never making the same sound twice) and the goose answered back again with the same sound.  So back and forth for five or six more sequences this goose and I made the same sounds.  It would call then I would call the same note back, and as their broad circle tightened and then straightened into a final approach I had a ripple of adrenaline course through me.  I was talking this bird, and the group that was with it, right into where we needed them to be.  And that was the point.  We took home five or six out of the group, and while I scratched down one of them, I can’t say for sure if the bird I got was the one that was communicating with me, or whether that bird was even in the bag at all.  But it didn’t matter of course, because aside from the feeling of accomplishment that comes from tricking a supremely evolved specimen of wildlife into a trap, I knew that for even a few short minutes I was intentionally communicating with a wild animal using their language, which was beyond anything I had done or experienced before.
I consider waterfowl to be some of the most delicious wild game meat I’ve ever eaten.  And I’m going to go so far as to be on record say something that some may find controversial.  Geese are delicious too.  Now I’ve heard from reputable sources that speckled-belly goose meat is the height of epicurean delights, and I’ve had some of the best roasted ducks out there (although the orgasmically tasty canvasback has long eluded me) but foremost I think Canada geese get a bad reputation when it comes to the plate.  Now before I continue I will say this; I have eaten some absolutely atrocious Canada goose meat, but that particular platter was filled with birds that were primarily “suburban geese”, and I don’t mean geese with mortgages and family sedans.  I was hunting with a friend on a farm that was just barely beyond the city limits of Guelph.  I believe we were legally hunting by about 50 yards.  We were helping out a farmer that my friend knew, and he had often complained of the geese, so we took a trip out to thin the numbers a bit.  Upon scouting we found that the birds were spending most of their day at a local public park about three kilometers away.  We shot three or four and upon consuming them the next day, I can safely say I have never eaten any wild game as unpleasant as those few birds.  Although I think they were eating some grain on this farm, I attribute most of their flavour to them eating chemically fertilized grass and what I can only assume was their own feces for most of their days.  Really “wild” geese, the kind that truly migrate and spend limited time in urban/suburban areas have never troubled me with their flavour.  In fact, a good late season goose with a layer of corn and grain fed fat on them is so darn good roasted and stuffed with apples, lemons, and rosemary that I could never think of skinning them for their breast and leg meat.  Early season geese aren’t as succulent in terms of that, and they usually are still a bit “pinny” as we say, so more often than not that meat goes into the grinder, which isn’t a bad way to enjoy the fruits of a goose hunt either.  Last year we took a pin-feathered mallard drake that was not even two hours expired (talk about fresh organic!) and made a great little appetizer by butterflying the breasts and then pan frying them with the whole, skinned legs.  We rarely go hungry during duck and goose season.
The atmosphere of the goose hunt itself also endears it further to me.  I do enjoy the silent solitude of deer and turkey hunting, but silence is mandated by the nature of the prey.  Deer, and to an even greater extent, wild turkeys have incredibly acute hearing.  I’m not disputing the hearing of a duck or a goose, but I find the waterfowl hunting experience just slightly more gregarious for those doing the hunting.  First off, we almost always do this a pretty large group.  Five or more at a minimum.  It is just too labour intensive with decoys, blinds, guns, ammunition and the assorted paraphernalia to not have many hands to make the work light.  In fact some of us take it much lighter than others.  Secondly this group mentality makes it easy to have a good time.  We often just stand in a ditch or along a well-concealed fencerow and half-shout jokes and barbs at each other.  We tell amusing stories about our spouses, friends of friends, or the hunting companions that have gone before us, some of whom have sadly departed.  We laugh and giggle until we weep, we try out each other’s calls, and we generally have a raucous time, all the while eyeing the horizon and the heavens for birds.  When we miss, we taunt and deride each other’s failures as human-beings, and when we succeed everyone claims the credit simultaneously, particularly if one of the many birds that hit the ground is wearing jewelry.
Since some of us purchased layout blinds, the experience has changed only slightly.  We still do all of the above, we just do it from a reclined position.
I could wax poetic about the time-honoured history of waterfowling in North America, about how it built economies and industries, of how it nearly died as a tradition in the early 1900’s, and how it has staged a comeback.  I could tell the indigenous inhabitants of North America’s legends related to ducks and geese that I have learned.  I could write about the powers of survival possessed by ducks and geese (powers that I have read about, heard about, and witnessed personally).  I could go on at length about the conservation successes originated by Delta Waterfowl and Ducks Unlimited, and I could lecture on our need to be even better conservationists to preserve our privilege to keep hunting ducks and geese.  There is just so much to tell of and to write about.  I’ve had more hunts than I can literally remember, and I’m not even 35 yet.  Think of the stories I have and that everyone else has that go untold; those that hunker in saw grass blinds, corn rows, flooded rice, and sinkboxes.
I haven’t even talked about retrievers yet.
In the end though what I say is likely just things that have been said before and known of for ages.  For my part I don’t need convincing.  As someone who loves and studied history, there is just far too much tradition, both personal and in the preceding years for me to ignore.
For those that do need convincing though, think about those histories while you are making your own.  And going forward, when you watch them lock up and drop in, as you thumb off the safety, rise and shout “Take ‘em!” or “Now!” or “Cut ‘em!” or whatever it is that you’ve made your war-cry, make sure that you commit those ones to your memory too.
Because when the hunt is over, that’s all we get to hang on to.  Until the next day out duck hunting that is.
deer hunting, goose hunting, waterfowl hunting

Perfect Moments of the Not-Too-Distant Past

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As I write this, I’m sitting at Pearson Airport waiting for a flight to Montreal, but I’m really back at Saturday afternoon on the banks of a drizzly beaver pond, cold water dripping off the brim of my hat, straining my eyes for the slightest movement in the faded gray skies that frame the rust, gold, and brown leaves of the treetops.  Our group of six intrepid waterfowlers had kicked a few dozen mallards out of this hole on our way in, and we’d been waiting in vain for the last few hours for them to return as they usually do.  A misty drizzle became steady rain, and then became a misty drizzle again.  Once or twice it outright poured, and all the while a breeze hung around, becoming just strong enough to make the wings on the flapping decoy spin and to ensure that the parts of you that weren’t waterproof got clammy and cold.
Yep, it was a duck hunter’s kind of afternoon.  The ducks just hadn’t read the script.
At some point, almost through spontaneous regeneration, six hunters became eight and with nothing flying we just decided to stand around and trade stories and jokes.  Some of the boys had just got back from moose hunting, and there was ample entertainment from them.  Someone recited the clips from an offensive sound file they had received in an email, and we all laughed.  At one point something very funny was said, because I found myself in fits of hilarity while wiping away tears of laughter.  It is probably better that I can’t recall exactly what it was that made me break down that way, as I’ve found that airport boarding areas aren’t the wisest of places to begin giggling like a maniac.
Some ducks came in and a few fell, with Tack’s yellow Lab Levi making quick work of the retrieves.  Then we went back to standing around and telling stories and lies.  We milled around and carried on quiet personal conversations that were punctuated with group laughs.  We talked about hunting, baseball, women, new guns, new calls, and decoys.  We threw sticks in the pond and then did personal play-by-play as Levi negotiated the decoy lines and the submerged twigs as he fetched them.
Eventually the wind and rain frustrated us enough that we went and wrangled the dekes; with our guns slung over shoulders we headed for the trucks.
Here on Monday, they just called for priority boarding, but my mind barely acknowledges the announcement.  I’m in my memories from Sunday, when we went into a puddled grain field with high stubble and good cover in the ditch.  Misty fog wisped around, and once again prospects were good for some gunning.  Hunkered down in a line we scratched down a drake mallard that came screaming into one of the de facto ponds that were slowly but surely taking over the field; it almost didn’t matter that we missed the other six ducks that were with him.  To be fair we didn’t cover ourselves with glory on that performance, but we compensated on a low flying trio of geese that swung wide in the field before winging towards the gap we had left between the two dozen shell decoys.  Some clucks, moans, growls, and shotgun reports later, and none of them made their way out of the field.  A few more ducks worked the spread, but all high and wary.  Pleading comeback calls and raspy chuckles failed to persuade them and after countless circles they lit down in a deep, fast-moving ditch one field over.  Our man Hastings went on safari to jump them up, and as his reward he crumpled a brace of them for his game bag.  As flocks of dozens and dozens of ducks traded on an increasingly strong wind, the fog blew off but a rain was fixing to blow in.  With Hastings stalking the ditches a field over, and with Tack answering nature’s call well up the ditch, it was up to Rory, Dane, Lucas, and myself to work the calls on six big geese that broke away and once again made our fakes.  Just moments before we had failed to lure in a group of forty or fifty geese that showed interest, but just weren’t convinced.  This group though, were coming in on a wire.  Low finishing work on my Tim Grounds Super Mag combined with good calling from Dane on his GK Giant Killer and from Rory on his Doug Schuyler Voodoo Medicine Man sealed the deal and as the birds put their feet down at fifteen yards, we all began sawing away on our pump guns.  As two geese winged away we collected the ones that stayed behind and went back to the cover of the ditch.  As the rain began to fall we decided to call it a morning and after a picture or two we packed the decoys, weaponry, and our birds back to the trucks.  One large breakfast and one superb nap later, We cleaned up the farmhouse, packed up, and began the trek back home.  Hours of hunting, laughing, and being out in the wilderness all seemed to race by as we re-told the tales from the hunts, the details compressed in my mind by the fleeting enjoyment of it all.
And now, less than twenty-four hours later I find myself about to put away the laptop and wing my way east into la belle province.  The exigencies of career and parenthood will take precedent for a while longer.
But with any luck, it won’t be long until I’m back on a shore or aside a field, hands braced on my 870 Express, waiting for the birds to drop their flaps and put the landing gear down.  Like a golfer’s hole-in-one, those perfect moments of the past keep me chasing the next ones.