hunting, lists upon lists

Underrated

Leave a comment

I got into a heated debate the other day with someone about the concept of “underrated “.

We were discussing underrated drummers and the person in question asserted that Neil Peart was the most underrated drummer of all time.  Now this is patently ridiculous, since Neil Peart is underrated only in comparison say, John Bonham or Keith Moon, insofar as drummers go.  Some drummers who are actually underrated, I argued, were Stewart Copeland or John Densmore, or other guys you’ve never heard of who are absolutely sick, tehcnically gifted drummers who just toil away behind the kit and don’t get tricky nicknames.

But as usual, a conversation not related to hunting is being applied to hunting.

Maybe it is the dirty, windy, rainy, cold weather in this part of Ontario that’s got me itching to chase some ducks, or the fact that deer season is rapidly approaching, or that my family and friends are moose hunting and I’m secretly envious of them all.  Whatever it is, I’ve been thinking about the underrated aspects of hunting and how great they are.  Some of them are becoming casualties of the modern approach to hunting, others (like moustaches) are experiencing a renaissance that is both interesting and disconcerting.  So here’s a list of some of the things that don’t get the respect or attention they deserve.

Pass-Shooting Waterfowl

Perhaps it is the focus on all the paraphenalia that must be sold to waterfowl hunters these days, or maybe it is a symptom of our sedentary, “everything should be easy” approach to modern life, but nobody gives pass-shooting any respect.  I don’t want to get more angry emails from waterfowlers so I will admit that ultra-realistic decoys, layout blinds, and breakthroughs in camouflage have made waterfowling more accesible, successful, and has arguably, with severely reduced ranges becoming the norm (don’t believe me?  Find one outfitter that doesn’t boast shooting inside of 20 yards) cut down on crippled and lost birds.  But reduced ranges and super-fast shotgun loads has also basically killed the arts of wingshooting, especially pass shooting.  There used to be a mathematical precision, a feel, a sweet spot to shotgunning ducks and geese.  Now, you almost don’t even have to bother with leading the birds…this has been a boon to myself and others who are terrible wingshooters, but its still kind of sad.  I also contend, with no evidence other than empirical observation, that the decline in shooting ability has actually increased sky-busting.  Shooter confidence is sky-high, and it leads to shooting at birds that are exactly that.  The older generation can just plain old shoot, and I attribute that to pass-shooting practice.

Walking In

A sound that I have almost become deaf to (because it has become so prevalent) is the distant hum of an ATV.  Once again, I’m not some reactionary traditionalist.  ATVs are great when you’ve got a moose, bear, or deer down in some godforsaken swamp or cedar thicket that is as impenetrable as a Vietnam jungle.  But for many they have become the default means of getting into their spots, which is too bad.  There’s so much that goes unappreciated when tearing through the bush on four wheels; things that the hunter who hikes in gets to see and hear.  I like an extra couple minutes of sleep as much as the next hunter but a still, early morning walk into a dimly lit forest is an experience worth getting up for.  Hearing the metallic ‘snick-snick’ of rifle cartridges sliding into place, stopping to listen for a deer with your breath hanging heavy around your head on a crisply frosted morning, and exposing the forest around you to the narrow-eyed peregrinations of a hunter stalking their prey all speed past in a blur on an ATV.  Not to mention the damage to fresh sign and the pastoral tranquility of the hunt that the ATV wreaks.  So this season, put some miles on…your boots.

Eating over a Fire

There was a time, so the deer camp elders say, when the hunting stock from which I am derived would have an outdoor fire on almost every suitable day of deer season (and even on a few unsuitable days) and toast some bread and meat on a split stick in the middle of the day before retiring for a brief nap under a tree.  I get the impression that my great-uncles, grandfather, and other deer hunters that preceded me hunted all day long and only returned to camp for dinner and sleep.  Keep in mind that these are deer camp recollections so their veracity is debatable at best, but it seems to me that lunch starts earlier and earlier every year we go deer hunting, and although we’ve done it once or twice in my deer-hunting career, we don’t often pack in a lunch and have an impromptu early November cookout.  The times we’ve done it have been exceptional; building the fire up, whittling down a long, forked twig, using an old stump as a cutting board/prep table, squatting next to a fire with a sandwich balanced in the ‘hot-zone’ over some glowing coals, leaning against a tree, fallen log, or maybe the above-mentioned stump and savoring a toasty treat.  All memories to cherish.  I vote we do it more often.

Orienteering

I covet my cousin’s GPS.  There’s one on my Christmas list this year.  But I also get a smug sense of satisfaction from navigating my way through the woods with a compass.  Sure it isn’t orienteering by the sun (I’m just simply not that hardcore) but picking out a landmark, navigating to it, and then picking out another landmark and doing it again as a means of getting to a destination has me at least under some semi-delusions that I have some skills as a woodsman.  And I like that feeling.  Still a new Garmin would be pretty kick-ass.

Gas Lanterns

It is nice to have a deer camp that is fully wired and generator compatible.  We can play CDs, charge batteries for digital cameras, power a water heater, and run a ceiling fan that keeps the heat from the woodstoves (and the reek of a dozen unwashed men) circulating through the camp.  But late in the evening, when hunters tired out from bushwhacking start to slip off to bed and the generator is switched off, some of us stay up, sip brews, and tell lies to each other.  Our constant companion is the hiss of a Coleman lantern.  My dad brings one of the old “pump” models and the sadly departed Frank Sweet had an even older one that was pitted, rusty, and absolutely effective at casting light and a modicum of close-quarters heat.  I think old Franko’s lantern had also seen a few hairy trips by sailboat around Georgian Bay and the Great Lakes, and with those gas lights hissing away the log walls breathed ambience.  Many a laugh and a story has floated over the tops of those old Colemans.  They are also the sole source of light in the early deer camp mornings (since we all see little point in running the generator for that short a time) or when the generator breaks down, which has in reality only happened once.  There’s a new, battery operated Coleman in camp, which is fine because it acheives the same functional purpose as its fuel-driven predecessor, but it is found to be sorely lacking in what it adds to that nebulous and ill-defined concept of “camp-feel”.

There’s so much more about hunting that is underrated.  Living alone in the forest.  Turning a tree into firewood.  Getting soaked to the bone and suffering martyr-like for the opportunity to take a turkey, duck, or deer.  I’m sure I’ll find the time to write more about it soon.

deer hunting, hunting regulations, taboo of the day

Taboo of the Day: Being a Jerk

Leave a comment

My thanks to the internet at large for giving me a seemingly endless well of bad behaviour and boorish opinions on which to base these Taboo of the Day posts.  Yes, I fully understand the irony of writing an internet blog and using it as an outlet to make light of the opinions expressed on the internet.  Moving on.

So I happen to have an account on a certain multi-billion dollar social network site, which is a trait that I have that in common with a few billion people.  On this site, there is a group which I have elected to become a member of, and this group’s purpose is to bring hunters together to talk about things, share photos and stories, and generally serve as a sounding board for hunters in Ontario.  As usual, cyberspace (if people even call it that anymore) seems to give some people the confidence to say basically anything they want.  Again…irony.

In Ontario, we have a recently enacted addition to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act.  The link to it is here.  Basically, no deer parts or products containing any parts of a deer (including urine, gland oils, etc) can be used as a deer attractant.  Like it or not, its the law.  I for one don’t particularly care as I’ve never used attractants heavily (or really at all) and their use in my circle of hunting friends is limited at best.  I’m not a wildlife biologist, nor do I aspire to be one even on an amateur basis, so when “the law” says don’t do it, I don’t do it.

I won’t name the group or the individual in question (that would be bad form) but basically, another member was quite vocal in the fact that they intended to intentionally subvert the above law, primarily because they did not agree with the law’s intent or execution.  Which is where this Taboo of the Day comes in.

I said my piece in the forum, because that’s what it is for, but something about the exchange stuck in craw.  The person in question had a variety of excuses (which is precisely what they were) including absolute certainty that they would not get caught, a variety of disparaging things to say about the Ministry of Natural Resources and the enforcement practices of Ontario’s Conservation Officers, and a very real belief that their approach was in the best interest of hunters at large (since in their opinion all laws regulating hunting are the product of a weak governmental system and intrusion by the boogieman of ‘anti-hunting’ and therefore are to, via extrapolation, be opposed).  It is important to note that the individual in question had no support in the forum and every other post (as of today) was on the ‘legal’ side of the argument. 

But this raises a topic that I think needs discussion.

Does opposition philosophically or otherwise to a law, as they pertain to hunting, mean that one should be able to not comply with them.  If you’re a rational person, I think you’d probably say that the answer is “no”.  When it comes to hunting, the law is the law, like it or not.

Some examples?  Sure.

I think that the gun control law in Canada is misguided.  But I sure as hell registered every gun I have.

I think that waterfowl seasons are too short.  But once the calendar turns and the season closes, I’m not out there still gunning.

Even though I don’t moose hunt I can say after reviewing it that the moose tag system in Ontario is in need of some overhauling, but I think it best that if you don’t have a tag for a bull moose, you don’t shoot a bull moose.

I’m usually not this narrow in my thinking but like I said when it comes to the rules I feel that they have to be followed.  And here’s why.

I’ve already gotten a lot of emails (some that were quite personal) since starting this blog from those who feel it is perfectly fine to infringe on game laws provided that they aren’t caught, and they think that my efforts to promote lawful hunting is some sort of infringement on their natural rights.  I’d go so far as to call some of it hate mail.  That’s fine.

To flog a dead horse, I’ll reiterate something from a few Taboo of the Day posts, a statement that while obvious to me, has caused me no end of controversy in my inbox.  Modern hunting is no longer a right.  I’m sorry. 

The reasons are numerous and certainly fodder for another post, but the bottom line is that we as a group hunt as a privilege in this the 21st century.  Very, very few of us rely on wild game for subsistence, and while we as a group certainly do inject millions of dollars into conservation and habitat conservation (facts that we should all be exceedingly proud of) our image is the most important thing we have.  Pig-headedly acting outside the legislation is one of the worst things (outside of outright poaching) that we can do as a group.

To put it simply we cannot pick and choose the laws we want to obey.  Because even though we act individually, we are judged all together.  If you want to have a smooth go of it, play by the rules.  I have no sympathy (or time, or even a liking for) those who do it otherwise, because they cost us all.  They cost us opportunities to hunt, they cost us landowner permission, and they cost us all the hard work we put in trying to show the non-hunting public the positive side of the pastime we all love so much.  Maybe I’m just a hopeless optimist, but being a self-important, stubborn jerk in the face of any law or whatever else that you feel does not fit within your worldview of what hunting is or should be (like opinions such as these expressed here for example) only serves to damage what generations ahead of us worked to build, which is a sustainable, respected tradition.  There are plenty of those out there who would disparage hunting, we don’t need those within our own ranks to help them out.

But by saying all this, have I become the self-important, stubborn jerk that I so disdain?  Maybe.  I guess it depends on your perspective.  An interesting thing I’ve learned in my life is that you can almost never change a person’s mind; so if you’re nodding in agreement with my opinions, odds are you already felt the same way I do.  If you’re so enraged with me that you’re contemplating all sorts of verbal abuse and hate mail, I imagine that you started out this post with that mindset.  Which is okay, because I can take it.  What I can’t take is the acts of the few denying me and the many patriots of hunting the enjoyment of the thing we love.

So please, when you make that choice of what side of any hunting law you are going to live on, worry a little less about a fine, or getting caught, or coming up with justifications for why what you do is okay, and worry about the future of hunting at large.  Because it sounds cliche I know, but is a deer or one more goose or whatever it is you’re chasing, or your own righteous opinions about what is right and wrong in the woods worth hanging a bad name on all of us?

If stating things like that makes me the enemy of the hunting community, maybe I’ve got this whole thing ass-backwards.  I don’t make the rules, I just follow them.

goose hunting

When a Plan Comes Together

Leave a comment

Angry clouds and teeming rain were my constant companions as I made the drive from Mississauga to Lion’s Head.  The opening of duck season, and the re-opening (after a five day hiatus) of goose season, loomed a mere 12 hours away.   We call it the “Double Opener Weekend” and it is cause for celebration and anticipation in our little group of diehard waterfowlers.  The weather was dirty, and the tiny engine of my Pontiac commuter car whirred loud in protest as I lashed it onward against crosswinds and standing water on Highway #6.  I already knew that this was to be the last Double Opener Weekend for the little hatchback, and it was stuffed to the gills with a layout blind, boots, snacks, beverages, and the various and sundry clothing, accessories, and bric-a-brac that weighs down a waterfowler’s vehicle and lays waste to their fuel economy.

I was battling the onset of a head cold and felt the pressure and fullness of it growing around my eyes and nose.  The barometer was playing see-saw and my sinuses and ears were alternating between drained and bursting for the duration of the three hour tour up to the camp.  I gnawed on jalapeno beef jerky and sipped fresh orange juice (a flavor sensation if there ever was one!) before stopping in to have a friend’s wife trim what meager hair I have remaining.  I sat and had a visit with them and their two children, before I stole my friend from his home and made my way to the cabin with him.

The cabin was raucous with the sounds of over twenty grown men laughing and telling stories, all shouting to be heard and trading innocuous verbal jabs at one another’s flaws, spouses, jobs, education, and hunting abilities.  The remains of what was once a few pizzas sat on a table while the rest of the spread consisted of chips and dip.  We shared drinks, cigars, stories, jokes, and remembrances, and we eventually devised the plans for the morning hunt.  Everywhere you looked there was wide-eyed joy and anticipation, good times, and that vague generalization known as “male bonding”.  I had been unable to attend last year and as I stood with one of my fellow hunters, each with a heavy arm around the other’s shoulder I was asked “Did you miss this?!”  My answer?

“Absolutely…but I won’t miss it again.”
5am arrived much too quickly and as my alarm hummed low, I shrugged on my hunting clothes and drove to the pre-determined meeting place.  I was to join the group with the layout blinds in the same fields we had hunted two weeks before.  The rain had stopped overnight but now low clouds promised a dim, grey start to this part of the waterfowl season.  We began to setup the blinds under clammy, cool skies and looked to get settled in.  The slightest hint of a south wind was blowing, and we expected the geese to swing in from the north.  What we did not expect was the pair of geese to come dropping in while we stood there grassing the blinds.  We dove into the blinds (my shotgun was not even loaded) and watched as the birds glided into the pocket.  One flared off and the other decided to leave as soon as his feet touched terra-firma.  As he climbed up out of the decoy spread, my cousin Dane’s shotgun barked once and the goose fell to the field, dead in the air.  We exercised a bit more haste in camouflaging the blinds and before long a single goose began to work the spread.  Again, Dane made a clean, single-shot kill as the bird circled to his left.  Shortly after that a group of four began to make for the spread.  Rory and I were in the central positions with Dane and Lucas hunting the ends of the line, and Rory and I scratched down three of the four birds.  Then, miraculously, the sun came out.  It was a good sign for the weekend’s weather to come, but a bad sign for the rest of the morning hunt.  As the sun’s strength grew and the clouds that had greeted the morning were chased off, large flocks of birds began to make wide swings away from our setup.  We called and flagged and called some more, but birds would circle high, showing lots of desire to be in the field, but also craning their necks from side to side and eyeing up the whole decoy spread before sliding off to other pastures.  We presumed that even though the blinds were reasonably well camouflaged, we could not hide the increasingly long shadows that the profiles of the blinds were casting into the decoy spread.  I find it no coincidence that all the birds were finishing perfectly under an overcast sky and circling high and flaring away in the sunshine.  One more group came just a little too close and we took one more bird from that group.  Coffee and a warm breakfast were calling so we packed up the gear and made for Mom’s Restaurant.
Saturday Morning’s Take (L-R: Rory, myself, Dane)
We reconnoitered at Mom’s over home fries, eggs, bacon, sausages, and French toast, where we heard the stories from one group of our guys that had gone to hunt a fence line ditch nearby had managed two geese, while another small group that had gone to hunt a local creek and had taken in four mallards.  Not a stellar morning by any stretch, but still a good haul considering every group had made a run for breakfast by 8:30am.  Breakfast, as usual, was delicious and peppered with more laughter and tall tales.  Many of the breakfast laughs seem to be at my expense, but when you are as handsome and talented as I, you expect the jealous barbs of the less fortunate.
In the afternoon, after we had dressed out the morning’s take and done a bit of camp clean up, we decided to check out a couple of local ponds and creeks to see if any mallards were loitering around in them.  At our first stop we found a group of about ten milling about and we managed to bring six of them to hand, after Levi made his first water retrieves of his fledgling hunting career.  Of the four that escaped, we tracked their progress to a small pond just across the road, where we managed a further two.  That was plenty for us, which was good because we didn’t find any other ducks on that tour of the countryside.  A stop at a local cornfield brought interesting news as well.  The farmer had cut a sixty yard swath of corn out of the middle of the field and it had turned into a veritable runway/landing strip for geese and ducks.  At least 300 birds packed the length and width of the open area.  It was a spot ripe for a standing corn hunt.
The fruits of pond-jumping on Saturday afternoon
Back at the camp we cleaned out the ducks and I was tasked with their preparation for a late lunch.  Seasoned with salt, pepper, and steak seasoning before being generously pan seared, the freshest ducks imaginable made their transition from swimming in ponds to swimming in our bellies in a little less than two hours.  That is about as real “organic” as you can come by in my humble opinion.  We washed those birds down with some homemade chili from a large pot that Lucas Hunter had brought before calling the landowner, obtaining permission to hunt the cornfield (others had also asked to hunt there as well so in his own words, “first come, first served”) and then saddled up early for the afternoon hunt.  We wanted to make sure we got there first as it looked a very promising spot.  We did arrive first and set up a pretty nice spread of decoys before we lined up inside the standing corn, all facing north, with the wind at our backs.
Saturday Evening’s Set-up
For an hour or so nothing was flying.  But soon enough the birds began to work.  The first couple of groups of geese swung out to the south before making a wide swoop and coming in from the north.  We got a couple from the early flocks, and didn’t exactly cover ourselves in glory on a single that was gliding in before he decided at the last minute that he’d go elsewhere.  The video is below.
Hastings and Rory went over to a nearby pond and kicked up a large flock of ducks and they began working our spread, circling five or six times (as ducks are apt to do) before swooping in to land.  We got five or six from that group, with a couple of guys making some pretty heroic shots.  Another goose or two came to hand and during a lull in the action I experienced two things that I had never seen before.
The first was when a hawk tried to dive bomb a pair of geese that were working their way towards our spread.  The hawk (of indeterminate species) had been cruising around the top of the corn rows for some time and as the pair of geese circled and began their final approach the bird of prey lunged up at the trailing goose, which expertly shed altitude to avoid the strike.  The hawk gave a short pursuit as the geese went into full acceleration, but the raptor gave up in seconds.  Of course this predatory action put the geese off the spread and we couldn’t plead them back.
The other thing that happened left me in awe, and is one of those stories that sounds like it is completely made up.  A single drake mallard came bombing into the spread at a speed that I’d never seen a duck attain.  I heard the bird first as it came in literally two feet over my head (and inches above the top of the corn) as the wind riffling through the drake’s wings made a sound that a surface to air missile.  I swear that as long as I’m living I won’t forget that sound.  It actually, genuinely scared me.  By the time I regained composure and made the target, it was beyond the outer edge of the spread.  It obviously startled a few of the guys too because no one could make a killing shot on it.  No one that is, except Tack’s dad Doug.  As the bird climbed and sped away from the spread Doug made a perfect shot to fold the bird up stone dead on the climb.  A chorus of cheers and congrats rained down on Doug and he quietly and reverently picked up the bird before slipping casually back into the corn rows.
More groups came in and we shot and we shot.  I ran out of shells; did I mention I had cracked a new box of 25 Kent Fasteel BB’s that morning?  Well I had.  With a half hour still to go until shooting light closed we called it an evening.  We had some immediate laughs and storytelling as we took some photos and packed up once more; dinner was waiting in the form of the morning’s haul of goose meat already cut into strips, with some marinating in Italian salad dressing and the remainder soaking a mesquite barbecue sauce.  These were all waiting to be rolled in thick cut, apple-smoked, peppercorn crusted bacon.  There was also some coleslaw, some French fries, and the remainder of the chili.  And maybe a beverage or two.
Yours truly watching the northern sky on Satruday afternoon
Donavon with a mallard on Saturday afternoon
We made our way back to the camp, and while some did the butchering others prepared the food.  Stillness descended over the camp once the food came out, and hungry men filled their bellies.  The evening was more subdued than the prior night, with an air of satisfied calm at the great day of hunting dominating.  Hunters said their piece and slowly shuffled off to bed, but not before we resolved to send a skeleton crew back to the same field in the morning.  As I drifted off to bed I could still hear the honks of geese and the reports of shotguns in the back of my mind; I love it when those are my last thoughts before falling into a slumber borne of an early morning and all-day hunting.  The weather could not have been any better, the birds had flown well, and the shooting had been above average; it was truly one of our best days of hunting as a group.
Sunday morning was a non-event.  Not much was flying and we had the sense that we’d shot enough geese and ducks for the weekend.  The day broke foggy with a great sunrise, but by 8am we had one goose to show for our efforts.
A foggy morning’s walk into the field
No one was upset.  We’d achieved everything we had set out to do; we’d had some laughs, spent time together as friends, and had a hunt that was one of the best we’d had for a Double Opener Weekend.  Camp clean up chores followed fast on the heels of another epic Mom’s Restaurant breakfast.  There were high fives and handshakes all around before we put down the bear mats and closed up camp.  By mid-afternoon on Sunday I was back on the road to Cambridge in need of a nap, a shave, and a car wash.  In a year’s time we’ll be back at it again; I hope the future can only hold a hunting weekend as good.
I might be overstretching my anticipations by hoping for a better one.
**All photos and video courtesy of Lucas Hunter**
goose hunting

Closing Time-Sunday Morning’s Hunt

Leave a comment
I woke up Sunday morning with a complex mixture of anticipation, exhaustion, and disappointment.  The exhaustion stemmed from hardly sleeping the night before; it was hard enough to get to sleep as I was dreaming about decoying geese…the nighttime congestion from inhaling dust off the old feather pillows on the bed made it tough to maintain even a couple of hours of consistent sleep and I awoke often all phlegmy and coughing.  The disappointment came from knowing that after that morning’s hunt I’d have to pack up and head home.  The anticipation?  Well I was hunting so I could only look hopefully forward to another great day in the fields.
The night before had been a low key affair and after we all cleaned the geese and got them stowed in the freezer, I fried up some baloney, toasted some bread, and caramelized some sweet Walla Walla onions for everyone.  With a spritz of ballpark mustard and a melting piece of singles cheese, well let’s just say there were no leftovers.  Wash all that down with a cold beer and I’d defy you to find any simpler, more viscerally delicious way to wrap up an evening.  I had a slightly heated debate about economics with Rory’s girlfriend, but in the end she agreed to disagree.  (She’s feisty there Rory…hold onto her!)  All lights were out by 11pm or so, because we’d all had a long day of goose hunting, which can be surprisingly tiring given how much fun it is.
That Sunday morning we had decided to tackle a pasture field that the evening before had held well over 300 geese.  There was no ditch and no stubble so we opted to stow the layout blinds and make our stand along the grassy perimeter of a page wire fence.  This is how we’d done it for many seasons before, and we’d have to rely on good calling, good decoy placement, and a little luck to have the birds drop in within range.  Sitting very, very still would also be helpful and is usually recommended.
We got no help from the wind, as it stubbornly refused to blow at any kind of real strength, but we set out the spread and fanned out along the fence line.  What whisper of a breeze there was blew into our backs as we all faced south.  The plan was to have the geese drop over our heads, circle out over the pasture and finish towards us.  Of course, the geese need to co-operate in that respect as well, which is sometimes problematic.
A low ground fog crept along and the day broke with a tepid gray that hinted at drizzle.  We set up and settled in; I’d decided to hunt “the shoulder” and sat at the far left side of the line, almost beyond the left edge of the decoys.  Any geese taxiing into the spread would be approaching a veritable wall of guns as we had seven shooters spread out along a 100 yard section of that fence.  It goes without saying that for safety’s sake everyone was to shoot in the same direction.  Before long, the sun broke bright and electric pink through the low clouds and what menacing rain there could have been stayed to the northwest.
Although some geese traded around, none worked the set with any real interest and our flagging and calling met with initial indifference.  Then it happened again; a bunch of birds dropped into a field nearly a kilometer away and all we could do was sit and watch as they drew every flock from miles around to them.  At one point you could look at any of the four compass points and see dozens of birds flying in from every direction which is a good indication of the kind of surplus of geese that are now resident in the Bruce Peninsula area.  And good lord, the sounds.  For this humble writer the sound of scads of geese yapping and honking from all around you is glorious music, and second in terms of natural spectacle only to what I like to call the “goose hurricane” which is when you are lucky enough to be set up in a field (or marsh, I guess) where you have nothing above you but dozens or hundreds of geese spinning, circling, and pitching in willy-nilly.  It looks literally like a washing cycle full of geese and I’ve been privileged enough to see it on a half-dozen occasions or more.  But I digress.
Hastings went down with Levi to kick the big flock up from the field they were in and with much excited calling and flagging we did manage to turn a few small groups in our direction, but they lacked the commitment we had seen in the geese of the previous day and we only managed to take down four more geese to round out our weekend total for the group at large to 30.  In retrospect the pasture field we were staking out was probably as much to blame for our lack of success as anything else.  It was a veritable goose sanctuary from a geographic sense with no ditch, no field cover or stubble and only sparse grass bunched up along the fence line.  No predator human or otherwise could really achieve much in the way of success when faced with natural obstacles such as those.  But we took lemons and made lemonade so to speak; besides we were hunting so who could complain?
As is usually the case a group came in about ten feet over our heads while we had all the decoys half in their bags and guns unloaded, and this occurrence, as anyone who knows goose hunting is aware of, is the starkest proof that Murphy’s Law is a scientifically real thing.  Following that we once again trekked out for breakfast and then up to the farm to dress out these last birds.  All of those four that we had gotten this morning came home with me and now reside in my freezer waiting to be browned and used as stewing meat.  I can almost taste it now.  After tidying up the farm house I packed up and headed south on Highway #6 for home; then the disappointment came back.
All the local lads up there had plans for another evening hunt, but family duties (and my job in the GTA) required my attention and prompt return home; it is safe to say that if I hunted that evening, I would not have made it in to work for Monday morning…it’s just too much driving, and I’d be much too tempted to go on another hunt Monday morning.  But nonetheless there is no hopelessness without hope, and I couldn’t stop grinning about the laughs and memories we’d all just shared and I broke into another anticipatory shiver as I thought about the return visit for when the duck season opens on September 24th.  It sounds like a cliché (and it probably is) but at that moment I’d really rather have been hunting.  Or to put it another way, goose hunting trips are like potato chips.
Having just one is not enough.

Hunting. Not Hype.