Wildwings 2012

Great Basin honkers

Packing ridiculously heavy bags of cheap Flambeau mallard decoys in knee-deep bays surrounding Utah's Great Salt Lake was my definition of waterfowl hunting growing up in the Great Basin. Images of thousands of puddle ducks chattering across the sky 15 minutes after shooting hours will forever be burned into my memory.

The duck hunting was incredible at times with limits of mallards, pintails, widgeon, spoonies, and green-winged teal. Geese...well geese were around and we managed to kill a few through the years, but I could probably count on both hands how many geese I had killed before my 18th birthday. I recall when my friend Darren Beuhler and I were 14, he smacked a big honker from 50 yards up one windy afternoon. It was magical--and a lucky shot-- to watch the honker fall and hit the mud flat with a earth-shaking thump. That goose was mounted and took over his dresser top all of our childhood years. I was green with envy every time I went in his room and admired his trophy honker. I longed to have a good goose hunt.

By my college years, I had figured out how to hunt Utah puddle ducks:

Cold December desert duck hunt (all drakes)

College days. Three wildlife students getting some real field education

Tyler Berry and I after a Cache valley hunt

Logan river bling!

That was years ago. Here in western Oregon we don't have the huge rafts of migrating puddlers although we have our fair share of mallards and widgeon, but what we do have are geese! It has been a dream-come-true making the once childhood wish of hunting canada geese into a common reality. Out first year or two after we moved to Oregon, we focused on local duck hunting with good success. Hunter was a good hunting buddy.

Then I met a couple of real goose fanatics. Since then it's been a real adventure, following the flocks of geese  like a primitive nomadic hunter would follow the herds of buffalo. Once we know what field the geese want to be, we'd swoop in before light with our fully-flocked goose decoys and shotguns and be there concealed waiting anxiously for their loud, commanding arrival. I'm hooked.

We wore the wrong camouflage this day. 600 feet lower elevation where we were used to hunting, all the fields were without snow! We improvised and did okay.

Mac's first hunt

Hunter H. and his first banded goose! 

He's growing right into those waders! This was a great day of both ducks and geese!

Mac learned to retrieve ducks this year.  We knocked three teal out of the sky and he retrieved each bird. 

Hunter B. and Hunter H. waiting for birds...burning grass, garbage, and whatever else they could light with their matches. 

Mac retrieving his first goose. I don't know if this should count as goose retrieval since its a cackler,  they're the size of  a small mallard.

Tod Lum (far right) showing great discipline looking at the camera rather than giving into the temptation (like Hunter and Jeremiah) of turning head to look at the pair of honkers with cupped wings wanting to land.