Moving Day

Two nights ago, we saw some crazy action on the Mo. It's one of the rarities that keep us living and playing here; even through the late fall and winter. With the polar vortex, which I think is just the new buzz word for what was once an Alberta Clipper, a window of opportunity opened for just long enough for the hardy outdoors person to participate in what makes this part of the country amazing. As I said in the last post, the hunting was pretty damn epic but that wasn't the entire experience. In order to really appreciate how weather affects the way we live and experience the outdoors, you have to look at the beginning and end to the recent storm system.

Three nights ago, as the front was moving in, I set up in a channel with my decoys like I have many times in the past. I thought there would be a significant number of birds heading to the river from either the prairie or from up North. I didn't fire a shot.

The wind shifted out of the North late in the day and the temps dropped steadily until the morning low was in the single digits. With it came a few inches of snow and one of the greater migrations of birds I've ever seen. Literally.

Mike Kuhnert and I hit the river that second day at around 1:30pm to what I could only describe as Disneyland for waterfowl hunters. It was fricken ridiculous. The snow geese were landing in the thousands on the barley fields with hundreds of swans, Canada geese and ducks of all kinds. We were set up well and we did shoot plenty of birds but what was so cool was just seeing the insane amount of birds coming from all directions to find a place to sit down for the night.

Mike and I had the absolute best seat in the house to witness this migration and as we hunkered down in the blind we watched vehicle after vehicle drive by on the recreation road of other duck hunters that we knew were saying, "Damn!! Why am I not out there?!!"

So I got a call later that second night of the storm. It was an invitation to hunt with Mike again and Pete Cardinal. Pete had been out on the roads that evening watching. With all those birds, there's no way a guy like Pete can resist so he gave us the call to hit the barely fields the next day. Like I said, there were thousands of birds in those fields that day and with the spread of decoys Pete has and just his knowledge of the game, it couldn't be anything but epic.

The plan was set and I literally went from a sense of awe from what we saw the past few hours to being giddy with anticipation for the next day and then actually feeling a little reservation because once you shoot as many birds as we were going to, it's a huge task to clean them all. I'll be honest, it was a little tough to sleep that night; almost like when I was a kid Friday night before the gun season openers.

Day three, we were on the back end of the storm and the skies went from grey, to blue and then back to snow a number of times. The temps never did reach the teens. It was unsettled with one minute squinting into the sun looking for birds and the next; squinting to avoid the snow flakes. There were birds but just about every flock was on a mission and that didn't include sitting down in the barely. And the snows, they were gone...

I say all the snows were gone, which isn't entirely true but let's just say 99.9% were. At about an hour and a half into the hunt, we were sitting down in the goose pit with the lids shut and the heaters on when a group of five snow geese landed just outside the decoys to the right of the spread. They didn't circle. They didn't call. They just came in and landed and we didn't even see them until they were ten yards out and setting hard left to right.

They landed and we told our fourth, the guy on the right, to pop the lid on the blind and shoot. He did and although hey may have hit one, they all flew off. Bummer. That was the first and only opportunity we had to that point. It was looking pretty bleak.

Sitting back down and reflecting and thinking maybe it was a sign of things to come, the group of snows came back. Again, they were silent and again, we didn't see them until they were almost on the ground but this time they landed to the left side of the decoys. Pete told me to lift up the lid on the pit and see where they were. They were just outside of the decoys behind a little swell in the field. All I could see is one of their heads.

"Climb out the front of the blind and shoot 'em," Pete whispered.

I did climb out as stealthily as I could, which wasn't very with all the clothes I had on. I actually almost fell back into the pit but these guys didn't move. The grass was pretty high and there was snow so the only thing I could see was the one yellow bill and an eye as this goose popped his head up.

I stood up outside of the blind, pulled up the gun and waited a second for them to take off.

I'll be honest, the geese were pitching a shutout up until that point and I'm not too proud. When they didn't fly, I pulled the trigger on that goose and rolled it. The snow erupted as the other four took off. I picked one out and pulled again, it dropped. Two of the remaining three flew left while the last went to the right. I pulled again and another one dropped and right then the boys in the pit opened up on the goose to the right and it dropped. We weren't getting skunked today boys.

The action was quite slow to say the least. We busted out brats and BS'd our way through the afternoon. The geese were moving as wave after wave flew over us heading south without even looking to sit down. Only one single and then a small group of Canada's gave us a shot after that group of snows. In the late afternoon, they stopped flying from the north and started coming back from Holter Lake from the South. Unfortunately, those geese were on a mission as well and it didn't include the barely. We wound up shooting those four snows and a few Canada's and that was it. We actually only let three geese leave the spread once we opened up on them, which gives you an idea of how few opportunities we got.

We had a lot of time to sit in the pit and think about all the different explanations for why the hunting was so slow given all the birds that were in the area the night before. The biggest difference was the lack of snow geese and the absence of swans. You can't shoot the swans in Lewis and Clark county, even if you have a tag and none of us really want to shoot one anyway but they do migrate with that first wave of birds. Day three was a moving day for that first wave. The weather was almost too good in that it brought too much cold and got that first wave getting out of Dodge quick. They didn't want to stick around for anything.

As for the local geese coming back from the lake and not even looking at our spread? The river is the warmest place to be right now and there's still plenty of food. They know where they are safe and they are creatures of habit so they go where the hunters don't and they hunker down for the night. Right now, there's just no reason to be in the fields but as new waves of birds come down from the North, and you'll know when they get here because they'll bring the golden eyes and buffalo heads, they will be looking for food and the barely will be good.

I'm definitely grateful for these last few days--to see the amount of birds we did--to see the window open up a crack and then slam shut was pretty damn cool. Regardless of the amount of birds killed, experiencing these last few days was unique and truly awesome and again, is what makes this area so special.

Keep 'em where they live...