For a week now I've been watching hundreds of Canada Geese pile into the corn fields across the road from my house. Hundreds and hundreds of yummy looking geese. Off to the post office I headed to pick up my migratory game bird license because I decided I needed a bit of a change. It was time to chase some geese.
I had to overcome some problems. The first one was what to use to shoot them. What do you do when your old shotgun can't shoot steel and other non-toxic shot is brutally expensive or non-existent? You make Flu Flu's of course.
I was somewhat prepared for this. I had a supply of feathers in my garage aka Ward's man cave and junk room. It was all set. I spent the afternoon making flu flu's. I made three. I figured if things worked out optimally that would be two flu flu's more than I needed. Needless to say I went into this with a reasonable expectation of my chances of success.
I had it all figured out. Write my 3.5 hour exam starting at noon, race home and head for the field to intercept the waves of geese just dying to land in reach of my brilliantly laid out decoys and my super fantastic calling skills. Oddly it didn't work out quite like that. I woke in the morning and watched the early birds heading in, only to hear the sounds of someone shooting at MY geese.
Ok I admit this wasn't the best thought out plan I've had. I read up quickly and on how to set decoys in fields for geese and where to put your layout blind. I didn't have a corn coloured layout blind. I had a forest flavoured sit out blind. I stuffed some corn stalks in it but the gale force winds seemed to rip them out almost as fast. The standard J pattern field decoy placement seemed to be a problem with my 4 sad old floating decoys I managed to scrounge up.
Even when I got into the blind and looked out it didn't look any better. Not much I could do about it now though. It's what I had and come what may I was hunting.
I knocked one of my fabulously made flu flu's, that may or may not actually fly straight enough to kill something, into my bow and discovered my first unexpected problem. The feathers were too long to accommodate my drop away rest cocked the way it was supposed to be. I was going to have to allow it to cock as I drew the bow.
I sat back with great anticipation and waited for the mayhem to start.
The first flight of geese appeared as if from nowhere. I grabbed my goose flute and went to put my limited practice to work. It's Halloween season. In keeping with the season my first call was expertly designed to sound like a zombie goose coming back, begrudgingly, from the dead. It was intentional. Honest! You believe me right? OK it was at this moment I was glad there was no one there to hear me. I was glad from the moment I arrived in the field actually. The entire adventure would have had seasoned goose guys smirking behind their hands.
Needless to say they didn't land. Actually that isn't true. They landed soon after they flew over my head. I spent the next 30 or so minutes watching hundreds of geese land. They landed beside me, in front of me and behind me. Hundreds of them but all well out of range. In the last 5 or so minutes I decided to try and sneak across the open corn field to try and shoot one. I was desperate. Did pretty good though. Got almost 100 yards from one bunch. Now I know why they don't spot and stalk geese in corn fields. They wisely use shotguns and lots of decoys. Oh well! Live and learn.
