John, Norman, Nellie & I went to Canada a couple of weeks ago for a snow goose hunt this is my story.




I'm sitting in the truck on our way home from our first Canada goose hunt. We packed up the truck last Friday and were on our way, of course Nellie had to throw a clinker to the plan and she came into heat the previous wed. Counting days we figured we would be ok if we stuck to our plan and got home on the 4th. Talk about an interesting ride with a intact male and female in heat but so far Norman has been minding his p's and q's. We made it as far as Minot, North Dakota Friday pm, got a hotel room and were off bright and early Sat am. John nor I have ever been to Canada so we didn't know what to expect at customs. It actually went really well, asked us questions but never looked at anything except our passports and gun registerations. They were kind and didn't even charge us duty on our extra ammo we brought up.

We got up to the farm house we were renting around noon and unpacked our stuff. Later that afternoon the scouting began. Got our field locked in for Sundays hunt and off to the farm house for drinks.

Sunday didn't turn out too hot, we set up our spread in the wrong field.....dumbasses hopefully that would be the only mistake we make this trip. So needless to say we didn't get any birds coming over close they were all landing in the field next to us where they were the night before. URGH!!!! Mike got one ross goose when a dumb one flew in our spread when we were picking up. Oh yea I should mention that I have never goose hunted before like that and getting up at 3 in the am to get out to the field and put our over 600 decoys was rough but the payout in the end was worth it. I didn't even have a chance to fall asleep in my blind. Amazing!!! That afternoon before scouting we jumped some ponds for ducks and got 2. Yea ha things are looking up.....Right.....

Monday was a much better day. We got in the right field and all the dogs had a blast retrieving numerous birds. I managed to shoot a really nice speckle bellied goose that I will be having mounting. Norman my buddy got to retrieve it. How great is that!!! The final count for the morning was: 16 cacklers, 9 ross, 5 snows, 2 honkers, 2 mallards, 1 spec, 1 pintail for a total of 36. Off to clean all the birds.

Tuesday we went crane hunting since we couldn't lock in a spot on the geese fields, we ended up with 4 cranes, 2 specs, 1 ross. The dogs thought the cranes were great and so did I, seeing them do cartwheels out of the sky was great.

Wed was another great day for me, I was the game hog and shot 11 out of the 23 birds we got that day. The guys took there dogs and went and stood by a tree line to shoot the birds that were flying over there and not coming by us, when they were doing that Nellie cryed and kept standing up wanting to go by them. I don't know why she wanted to do that since I shot 2 ross's that came flying into the decoys when the riff raft finally left me alone. Total count was: 14 ross, 3 snows, 3 pintails, 2 cacklers, 1 mallard.

Thursday was a terrible crappy raining day. We couldn't even get near the field we wanted to hunt. Couldn't get anywhere's except to the liquour store to get drinks and grocery store to get cards. Rest of the day was spent in the farm house. Total count: 0

Friday we hunting in the field next to the farm house, the lady that owns the place said we should have any problems going in that field with the wheat stubble and all. Well she was right we didn't have any problems getting in there getting out was the problem! After setting up decoys for over a hour and half we got in the trucks to leave and we wern't going anywhere's. The trucks sunk in and we had to get out the chains and put them on our truck in order to get our truck with the decoy trailer on out and then pull Mike's truck out. After a hour of messing with the chains and John turing into a black boy we got the trucks out. (I don't know who this we person is since I sat in the truck while the guys messed with that). LOL We ended up with 1 snow, 1 ross. I shot the snow and only mamied it, I thought I rung his neck until it got up and walked away. I released Norman and he got to have 2 whole retrieves for the day. What a lucky guy That afternoon we jumped some ponds again and Nellie got to retrieve 2 pintails and 2 shovelers.

Saturday am was our last hunt before we left, wanted to do something light since we had to pack and leave. We went on a crane hunt again. No decoys just standing in the line fence. Mike got his limit with Pearl which was 5, I shot 2 in a group of three so Norman got a double retrieve and poor John and Nellie only got one. So the grand total of birds for the week was 83. Could of been better and could of been worse but I'm not complaining since it was my first goose hunt out of state and I had one hell of a good time. The dogs had a great time and got along really well also. My favorite part of the trip was sitting next to Norman and when he saw a bird in the sky his already wagging tail would wag faster as the bird would get close hitting me in the back.

I have to say thank you to Mike who invited us along on this hunt that he has been doing for the past 10 years. Mike owns one of Nellie's puppies so we had 3 generations of Sand Spring Chesapeakes hunting with us each day....couldn't get better than that.

See ya next year Canada....

Sounds like you guys had a good time.
Love the hunt'n stories.

You and guys should of stopped out to see the place on the way through, I'm only 10 min. off I-94. I got to talk to Mike at a few hunt test this summer and he came to our training day, he's a cool guy. Next year if you need a place to crash on your way out let me know.

Craig

Goose hunting in Canada sounds like a great time!

Although, we never had the limits like you folks, there was time when living in Timnath, CO., I could walk out my back door and shoot the big geese (and lessers too) when they came down from Canada in the late fall, as they would fly over the house (nearest neighbor was a 1/4 mile away). Or set up my spread in a 500 acre corn field next door that my neighbor let me use during hunting season. Nothing like it. Have lunch, drink a beer, watch the Broncos on a Sunday and then walk back out to the blind to catch the afternoon flight.

And, some great retriever training all year long a couple of miles away. Must have been like heaven.

Keith