The 2010 spring snow goose conservation season opened Feb 20. No we didn’t make a mistake, the probability of snow geese migrating back into North Dakota before March is slim, but the remote chance of a mild winter, limited snow cover and early spring are possible. Yes, I said possible, but improbable.

It seems like forever since those variables have crossed over where a huntable snow goose population has found their way across the South Dakota line. But most hunters understand we’d rather open the season early on paper rather than too late and miss the opportunity to reduce the population-which is the reason for the season so to speak. It’s the reason this is labled a conservation order and not a hunt.

Proof positive the birds don’t really care when we open the season as the migration triggers are more predicated on the photo-period or day length, which tells the birds it’s time to press towards the spring nesting grounds. While the birds react to the physiological migration impulse the physical barrier of snow limits the northward migration and while the early March snow cover stretched deep into Kansas the snow depth to the south shrinks faster than ours and the past few years the majority of the snow geese numbers have pushed through in a hurry as a combination of late spring and the clock ticking on spring nesting results in a shorter spring snow goose conservation season.

While regulations allow electronic calls, unplugged shotguns along with unlimited daily and possession limits, similar to last year the need to limit the impact to roads can’t be stressed enough. I know it makes sense, and anyone who’s been off the pavement knows full well but it might be a case of it’s easier said than done? I’m not sure, but I think we all can do better. Let me be clear, it’s not just hunters out on the farm to market roads. From oil and wind, to even ma and pa just out for a slumbering spring is finally here Sunday drive. It’s everyone and I mean everyone’s job to take it easy out there.

And before you just assume it’s only for the benefit of farmers,ranchers and the rural community, those same trails and roads needed by farmers can be the difference between life and death when emergency personnel and vehicles need to access those areas. It can come down to a matter of seconds and minutes, so let’s all do our part to keep those roads in as good of shape as possible.

Most of North Dakota has been saturated with moisture from snow last winter to the holdover from a wet 2009 summer and if you find yourself traveling for geese, even spring turkey into area’s you haven’t been, be forewarned even more than ever you never know what you might encounter. Washed out culverts and bridges can be more than a hindrance resulting in back tracking or extra time looking to get where need be, in some instances those same road obstacles in low light driving conditions can become deadly.

One last note on the hunting end of it, April first marks the license year for fishing and small game license renewal, legally license snow goose hunters from last fall are allowed to use those from last fall, but a new Harvest Information Program(HIP) number is needed online license purchases will walk you through the survey or you may call 1-888-634-4798. Get out, be safe and enjoy.

Leier is a biologist with the Game and Fish Department. He can be reached by email: dleier@nd.gov.

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A red collared blue goose landing in your decoys can change a perspective in a hurry

The blues have always been American. As American as apple pie, extension tubes, electronic calls and a high enough population of the North American Lesser Snow geese to warrant a Conservation Order. In the last month, I have gone from a blues bar in Chicago on one weekend, to snow goose hunting the next, to a blues bar in Madison, WI after that, to snow goose hunting just this past weekend. Coincidence? Maybe, snow goose hunting in the spring can be frustrating at times.

My father once told me that he thought mallard ducks were the wariest of all waterfowl. That of course, was before he hunted Canada geese he explained. Then he tried a to harvest a few snow geese in the spring. Now he knows why most diehard waterfowlers consider snow geese to be the ultimate challenge.

I am not completely sure of a lot of things when it comes to hunting snow geese. Some day’s things work, other days they don’t. What I do know is this season has been, the wettest, muddiest and coldest I have experienced since I began to hunt snows in the spring.

Be prepared to go when the migration is on

If my group of hunting buddies did not bring a four-wheeler along for either trip, we would not have been able to decoy hunt. Period. Last Friday I even talked with a few guys that had gotten their four-wheelers stuck while trying to haul decoys out on Dakota cornfields. That type of circumstance does not impress farmers in the least.

When I went on my first spring snow goose hunt in 2002, we hunted in long-sleeve t-shirts and jeans. We would hunt all day through sweat and sunburn. It felt good to be outside hunting geese and curing ‘cabin fever’.

Spring snow goose hunting is the perfect cure of ‘cabin fever.’ It’s too early to do yard work, and the lakes are still covered in ice. Sitting in a cornfield; that has been littered with cow pies, surrounded by decoys, in the wind, all day, will make you want to be indoors.

An area void with birds can fill in the matter of a day - timing this location is the key to success

Unpredictable weather patterns have made packing for hunting trips more difficult in the spring of 2007. I haven’t packed enough warm clothes, and I have paid dearly for it. This spring season I have found myself in some cold temperatures trying to stay ahead of the geese. It will be a long time before I go on another hunting trip without bringing my long underwear.

When hunting snow geese in the spring timing is everything. It is difficult to plan hunting trips in advance. If you decide to go early, the snow geese may be too far to the south. Plan a trip too late and you may not be able to find any birds south of the Canadian border.

The snow geese can push north quickly if the weather permits and the pursuit can be difficult and costly. With a blizzard forecasted at this time, some goose hunters have talked about the possibility of a ‘reverse migration.’ (Editors Note: The week after this was written a Reverse Migration DID happen – for almost 2 weeks) Freezing temperatures would send snow geese back south for open water causing a ‘reverse migration.’ Over the weekend I asked my hunting buddy Blake Hermel what he thought. He replied that it, “Sounded expensive.”

Myself, I don’t really have much to complain about after chasing snow geese this spring. My friends and I put birds in the bag five out of the six days I hunted. We never got a vehicle stuck in a place were we could not remove it ourselves with a little effort. Plus, the last time I checked there was nothing wrong with hunting clothes being caked in mud. Spray the clothes off with a hose; dry them in the sun and you are ready to go for the fall.

Regardless, having to put away the hunting gear and 12 gauges for five months gives me the blues. It is hard to believe that once there was no such thing as a spring snow goose season. The day the Conservation Order is not needed to control the population of snow geese, I will really have the blues.

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Note: Article Written at the end of April

Nothing like waiting on the migration

Hello. My name is Richard. I’m addicted to hunting spring geese and today is the seventeenth consecutive day I have not checked the Spring Snow Goose Migration Report at Nodak Outdoors.

My support group believes that writing this article will be therapeutic for me. You see, I just returned from another frustrating spring snow goose hunting trip and my hope is that this trip will be my last. You might say that the end of this trip starts the beginning of my recovery.

My story is about a long and steady descent into an addiction to hunting spring snow geese. It began some years ago when an issue of Ducks Unlimited Magazine arrived in the mail. I’ll never forget that issue. It was so new, so exotic. The magazine featured an article about the Spring Conservation Season in southwest Iowa. According to the article, snow geese were flying low and stacked up by the thousands. The photographs in the article showed a sky darkened by snow geese, in-your-face photos of snow geese, and happy hunters posing with piles of dead birds. The article spoke of electronic callers, hundreds of decoys, warm sunny days of hunting, and unplugged shotguns. It sent out an irresistible Siren call. That was my first introduction to spring snow goose hunting. You might say that the DU article was my gateway drug.

That spring, with magazine in hand, I drove to what I then understood to be the Mecca of spring goose hunting: southwest Iowa, just across the Missouri River from Nebraska City, NE. My father-in-law, ordinarily a judicious man, abetted my early addiction by coming along. We hunted an ideal man-made impoundment called Copper Creek, located on the flyway sort of between Forney Lake and Riverton. The date was around the first week in April. The weather was warm, but the wind was blowing at gale force. The guide met us at the appointed time and as we walked to the blind, I spotted several hundred white birds roosting in a far corner of the lake. I nudged my father-in-law and said something like, “look at all those geese sitting on the Lake.” Our guide overheard me – as so often happens – and piped in, “them’s pelicans.” I should have suspected something right then, but chose to ignore this harbinger of things to come.

No birds at dawn that first day of spring goose hunting. No birds at 7:00 or 8:00, either. But around 9:00 one small group of Ross Geese flew in and we knocked a couple of them down. Other than that short flurry of activity, you needed binoculars to see any other snow geese that day. Like any good salesman, the guide told us exactly what we wanted to hear, that is to say, we should have been there two weeks ago. The guide spoke of fifty-bird days and going through boxes of shells. As my father-in-law waited impatiently in the car for me while I kept my eyes fixed on an empty and darkening sky, I deluded myself into thinking that we were in the right spot, but at the wrong time. Next year, I would plan the trip to be in the middle of the heart of the migration. That self-delusion marks the real beginning of my undoing.

Timing is so crucial to spring snow goose success

The following spring we again headed out to SW Iowa, but this time around the middle of March. It was warm and sunny when I left Chicago. During the drive to southwestern Iowa we saw several large flocks of snow geese milling around. Things looked promising.

Twelve hours later, we had to chip ice off the doors to get into the Suburban in Nebraska City. The high temperature that day was recorded at dawn. In a not entirely selfless act, I loaned my insulated bib-overalls to my father-in-law just to keep him from going home early. The relentless wind blew a combination of ice pellets and field grit into our faces all day. The day was spent shivering uncontrollably in metal pit blind staring at iced-up decoys posed in mad variety of unnatural and grotesque positions. Never saw a bird that day. Not even a starling. The day before we arrived, the guide said, they took 27 out of that same blind. I was hooked.

My father-in-law again unwittingly abetted my addiction the following year by introducing me to the friend of a friend who hunts snow geese in southeast Iowa. He did this out of concern for my wife and family. His thinking was if I traveled as far as southeast Iowa to sate my appetite for spring goose hunting, I would cover about half the distance and thus spend more time at home.

In retrospect, I see now that my father-in-law’s plan to get me to hunt southeastern Iowa was his attempt – his last attempt – to get me out of this self-destructive cycle of wild goose chases. Like many addicts, instead of reaching out for the life line, I twisted his gesture to mean that reducing my travel time by half meant I could double the time I spent in the field. I did. One year I got two birds. The next year; none over two days. It was about that time that I really lost contact with reality. I entered that time of my life that my family now euphemistically refers to as “Daddy’s lost years.”

I started doing Google searches for snow goose hunting videos at work. I bought white overalls. I changed my password to “getsnowgeese.” For days at a time I thought about almost nothing else except whether or not to buy a magazine extension tube for my Benelli. In short, I became obsessed with hunting spring snow geese.

It was during this period that I first read about the Rainwater Basin. One unforgettable and compelling image I remember seeing portrayed spring snow goose migration routes as an hour glass overlaying the U.S. The narrowest part of the hour glass, a spot so narrow that the two opposing lines of the hour glass almost touched, was right over the Rainwater Basin. I had to have some of that. Money, time, and distance no longer mattered.

In the spring you're at the mercy of mother nature. Be prepared for wet and muddy conditions.

That spring I hooked up with a guide and made my way to Sutton, NE. A group of other snow-goose junkies and I hunted a muddy corn field downwind from a hog confinement operation. The field we hunted was sprayed with waste from the hog operation. The second day of the hunt, my hunting party had to run for cover during a freak icy thunderstorm. Altogether, I spent two nearly fruitless days driving over dirt roads at breakneck speeds in the pre-dawn hours trying to keep up with the guide’s truck, stayed in a road-side hotel that brought images of Norman Bates’ mother to mind, and spent 12-hours each day in a wet layout blind.

But that’s not the worst of it. On the way home from Nebraska, I was stopped by a county sheriff on I-80 because by the time I had started home, I fit the profile of crystal-meth smuggler from Illinois. (Must have been the mud on the car and the vacant expression on my face.) Once he saw my gear and heard my pathetic story, he let me go, but only after telling me that two days ago he and a buddy shot 53 “sky-carp” from his brother-in-law’s back porch. Now it was personal.

I brooded my way through the following fall duck season. I was shooting mallards but thinking snow geese. This coming spring would be different, I told myself. This spring I felt the need to do something drastic. This spring, I told my disbelieving wife, children, and father-in-law, I’m going to South Dakota.

And so it was. I hooked up with a guide before Christmas. Paid more money than I ever paid for a guide. Traveled further than I ever traveled to shoot a bird. Ended up crossing an icy, waste-high creek in the pre-dawn darkness and walking about one mile over terrain pockmarked by prairie dog holes and cow pies. Hunted over a brand new spread of a thousand silk-screened silo-socks and another hundred strategically placed full body decoys. The layout blinds were so carefully camouflaged I tripped over them. The night before the morning of our first hunt, the guide said there were 10,000 geese in the field where we were set up. My headlamp illuminated fresh goose droppings and foot prints in the mud. The wind was at our back. We were miles from the closest road. The guide’s electronic calling system was the envy of Carnegie Hall. That first day we had perfect breezy weather. If there was an “i” not dotted or a “t” not crossed, I couldn’t find it. This was it, I told myself.

The next part of the story is still painful for me. After so many tries, to have traveled so far, to have come so close…

There is a love-hate relationship between snow geese and man. While snow goose hunter's respect the game they pursue, you can't help be feel frustrated when they make you look dumb

I  saw snow geese by the tens of thousands during this trip. But do you know what? Only 12 geese came within 90 yards over two days. The geese toyed with us that trip. It tore at my heart as I watched seemingly endless enormous globs of snows spot our decoys, turn directly toward us as if following a beacon, and slowly gain altitude until they were just out of range right over our heads. There they would linger. There they would circle slowly above, taunting me. I distinctly remember hearing them call, “Richard, Richard, 1,500 miles, $1,000, Richard, Richard.”

I can hear them still as I write this. Calling me. Beckoning me to come back. Maybe I didn’t travel far enough, I thought to myself. Maybe I need to try central South Dakota, or maybe North Dakota, or maybe even Saskatchewan. Could it be that two days wasn’t long enough. Maybe I should have booked that third day, maybe four days… I became feverish, even slightly delirious as I started the long drive home.

I know now that I bottomed-out that trip. But on the long drive home, I had a rare moment of clarity. The absurdity of spring goose hunting finally penetrated my consciousness. Just twenty-four hours earlier, I was laying in the middle of a thousand decoys with eight other hunters, all of us afraid to look out from the blind for fear of spooking the lone snow goose circling above in case it might be considering the remote possibility of closing to within 90 yards. As I remembered that image from the day before, I started laughing, first quietly to myself then progressively louder and harder until I had to pull the car over to keep from driving off the road. I felt a sudden relief, as if a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

I  realized that if this were the regular season instead of the spring snow goose season, there is no way in hell I would have paid what I paid for a guide, driven 1,500 miles, spent three nights in a rundown motel, and looked forward to a hot meal at a bowling alley just to kill a handful of birds.

I realized that living where I do means that the success of any spring goose trip is hostage to the weather and migration patters. Two variables I cannot control no matter how good the plan, how much I spend, or how far I travel.

At first I could hardly bear to think these thoughts much less utter them, but thanks to my local chapter of Spring Snow Goose Hunters Anonymous, I’ve decided to leave hunting spring snows to those who live under them. So, I’m done with it. I’m going cold turkey on snow geese. Spent my last dollar and drove my last mile chasing spring geese. Boys, I’m leaving the field to you.

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Forecast: 40% chance of rain turning to snow with 25-35 mph winds out of the N with winds gusting over 40 mph at times. The day was the last day of goose season in 1990 and it was on that day that I learned the phrase “Sudden Ludden”. And it was the night before when the decision was made to drive down to the firing line on the south end of the refuge, just west of the town of Ludden, ND. That morning is still considered a legend by everyone I know who participated.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the town, it’s a small town located just south of Oakes, ND and just north of Sand Lake Refuge in NE South Dakota. While to most it’s just a quick slowdown cruising through goose country, I can’t help but think of that morning EVERYTIME I drive past it.

The firing line was a local favorite during the fall for decades.

The refuge starts at the same location as the firing line, a tree line on the north side of HW-11 off the intersection of HW-11 and HW-1. The birds would roost right off the highway and all along the curve of the river going north of town. Most birds roosted within a half mile of the firing line.

On the drive down to Ludden my father spoke of past stories of this place. You wouldn’t know it now but just 15 years ago and before for decades, it was a major snow goose staging area all hunting season long. “When the wind gets heavy out of the north, suddenly Ludden turns on. The wind doesn’t allow the geese enough room to circle high enough so they end up going over tree high,” were the words of my father. Hence, Sudden Ludden. I wasn’t sure if these stories were true or just something to keep me awake on the way down from Fargo, but it worked. I was excited to say the least.

Don't be up to no good now in Ludden...

We got there just around shooting time and I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was already 10-15 vehicles parked off the trees, so we parked my dad’s ’89 Chevy Suburban along the tree row right about where my dad felt the wind would push them over. I stepped out of the vehicle and to my surprise, there wasn’t a breath of wind or a cloud in the sky. Some forecast I thought? We loaded up our guns anyway and sat in the Suburban and waited. It was a cold morning and being able to sit in the warm vehicle was comforting. We could hear the geese coming and it gave us ample amount of time to get out and get ready for them to come over. I know, it doesn’t sound very romantic but hey, when in Rome…

For the first couple hours we didn’t fire a shot. The birds came over so high that there wasn’t a chance that the old slow steel shot would bring one down. What was odd is more vehicles kept showing up and at one point there might have been 25 vehicles around us, maybe more. A look to the south and I could see a decoy spread just a ¼ mile into the field. I later found out that the people in the spread was a kid I knew from school, who I believe is still a goose guide to this day up in Maxbass, ND.

The morning continued on with bluebird skies and barely a breath of wind. Some guys on the east side of the line got anxious or just wanted to finish all their shells for the year, we never did find out. They were skybusting at geese easily around 100 yards for hours on end. I remember walking by at one point later that morning and the ground was red with hulls. I wouldn’t have doubted if they shot a case of shells or more. It was now about 10 am and we were beginning the doubt of shooting anything that morning. “One more hour” we said, since it was in fact the last day of the season. After all, the vast majority of the geese still hadn’t left the refuge so there was at least still geese and hope.

Here they come again!

Remember the old saying, “If you don’t like North Dakota weather, just wait 5 minutes…” Well it happened. Sometime around 10:30 am a front came charging in from the North/Northwest sky like a freight train. It came fast and brought gusty winds coupled with some snow and rain. And the second this large front came through, the geese got anxious. Suddenly, it was like it was time to go and the geese started coming off the refuge in small to mid-size flocks. Just as my dad explained on the way down, the birds got up and started to circle….but the wind was too strong. As they did their first turn the wind sent them in motion pushing them towards the firing line without any chance of stopping or swinging. At that point they were flapping HARD just to get over the trees which were around 20 yards high. The moment they came over the trees it was war. The 25 or so vehicles full of hunters unleashed their fiery on the flocks causing the sky to rain with birds. Each volley easily 50 geese or so hit the ground with dogs of all breeds hightailing it out to the south of the highway to retrieve the dead or crippled birds. This phenomenon occurred for the next couple hours all the way up to closing time. The birds came over every 20-30 seconds and the barrage of shotguns continued. Remember the east end skybusters? They were walking around the last hour offering big bucks for a box of shells, too bad they didn’t conserve.

We ran out of shells right around 1 pm. We stayed around for awhile after and watched. I don’t remember how many geese we brought home. Whether it was a limit or close, I can’t say I recall. But I do know we ended the season for the first time without an extra steel shell left. I learned a lot that day about leading geese, with hours of practice. And I’ll never forget the sky full of geese at tree high level that never seemed to end.

I don’t know if we’ll ever see large concentrations on that refuge again, the way the fall snow goose migration is changing it’s anyone’s guess. But I do know if they are there, and the wind gets nasty from the north…there’s an opportunity awaiting in Sudden Ludden.

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Tom Jones "tsodak" carrying some of Friday's birds

Spring goose hunting in North Dakota is not for the weak. Whether you’re a decoyer or a sneaker/pass shooter, the mud and weather can make things miserable. I know some pretty hardcore fall goose hunters that won’t even attempt to hunt in the spring. “Too much work” or “Too much mud” or a combination of the two is what I hear quite often. I can’t blame them, but I can’t explain my obsession for fooling snow geese either so I’ll just get straight to the point.

Spring is something I take pretty seriously. In North Dakota, the winters run long and cabin fever can set in pretty quick. Winter for me was the busiest on record and the lack of ice fishing made it even worse. I find comfort in the wide open spaces of North Dakota, it’s in my blood. Come late January, you’ll find a couple of us back in the shop to prepare for another spring snow goose season. I wish I could say it meant loading up the trailer and waiting… but there’s always work to be done.  We added new blinds and ecallers, and took care of all the minor details that could cause larger problems later. In other words, we were ready.

When mid-March came around the corner, we couldn’t wait any longer. The snow geese were hanging out on the doorstep of North Dakota, but wouldn’t come in so we packed up for South Dakota. After finding an excellent spot to setup, we gave our new spread its first day of action. It was refreshing and enjoyable to work birds in closer than before, but that weekend was cut REAL short when over half of the windsock bodies froze to the sheet water. Weatherman wasn’t predicting freezing temperatures, so we tossed it out as bad luck, just one of those instances that you just consider apart of the spring.

"The Spot" for the weekend setup

Two weeks later the spring snow goose migration was kicking in full gear. It was the end of March and snow geese were pretty much everywhere from the Northwest to the Southeast portions of North Dakota. We started our scouting for the weekend on Wednesday, and after a few tips from my fellow scouters we found the “X”. The area we planned to hunt was relatively flat, but there was one low lying area in particular that was holding more water. The snow geese absolutely loved the spot and would loaf there from time to time all day. After some investigation, the spot had a dirt road coming in from the north that was bone dry and ran all the way down to the sheet water’s edge. Perfect. There was nothing that could go wrong with this spot I thought. It’s wide open, has just enough cover, borders some cornfields and was impossible to jump (rule of thumb for me is if you could sneak your decoy spread, you’re in the wrong spot). And to top it off there could’ve been over 100K snow geese within 5 miles of the spot. We decided there was no need to continue scouting, this was our spot.

We were looking to setup early Friday afternoon, so we had to get everything ready Thursday night. We had no time to waste Friday so we did all the tedious things the night before. I knew our cover was limited and blending into the landscape in the spot was vital. We spent some time mudding up our blinds to perfection, and with the same mentality loaded up our decoys for easy deployment. Come lunch hour on Friday, we’d be ready to hit the road.

I can’t lie, I was really excited. We were looking to time the migration perfectly in our area north of I-94. Plenty of geese around our spot, and hundreds of thousands were ready to move in from the south. The weather on Friday was about right with mostly cloudy skies and a good wind from the east in the teens. The forecast according to the National Weather Service was for a 30% change of showers on Saturday but no big deal…they aren’t indicating anything serious. As we pulled up to the spot the geese were already moving around the area in large numbers. It appeared as if they were feeding all day, a tell tale sign that a migration was probably to follow. We rolled down to the spot and it had a nice point to work off of. We wanted to work the birds over the water in any wind (except for a W wind), so the point would give us that ability to shift the landing zone. Without hesitation we started setting up. Unfortunately, the warm temps and wind was drying up the sheet water quick and the waters edge had creeped far enough away that our floaters weren’t usable. As much as we wanted to use them, it just wasn’t practical so we left them in the trailer. We put out about 1400 of our windsocks and put out all the blinds, flags, e-callers, and other misc. gear. Once everything was in place we moved the vehicles back to the road and started to get ready. On our walk back to the spread from the vehicles, I watched a couple flocks come over the spread….lock up….and swing down without any hesitation, and this is without the e-callers running. I figured this was positive foreshadowing for the weekend.

We only had a couple hours left to hunt, and the birds were heavy in the cornfields but with some patience we figured it was only a matter of time. We were targeting the front push of the migration, with the vast majority of the birds being mature. We were prepared for them to decoy poorly, but that afternoon was quite the opposite. Some of our birds came in 30 yards high all the way in and down to finish. Not many were circling, they were either in or out and we got some fantastic late afternoon shooting. I keep thinking to myself that I wish we were out there all day. If the birds worked like that all day it could’ve been a day to remember. No worries, we have all weekend to hunt. We loaded up our e-callers to charge and left all of our other gear out. That night we stopped at the bar and had a steak and talked about the weekend ahead of us. Everyone was positive, and why wouldn’t we???

Saturday morning came quick. I remember hitting the alarm clock around 5:50 only to realize we set the clock too late (already getting a bit light out). After some shuffling around we were on our way. It was looking like one of those mornings you don’t sleep in. There was a heavy fog, and birds were moving around anyways. I had a pit in my stomach as I knew what to expect when we get there. Sure enough, Aaron calls me on my cell…”Where the hell are you??? There are geese everywhere and all over our spread and we have no e-callers?” But at that point we could only hurry. When we arrived we quickly threw on our gear, grabbed our guns and away we went on the 4-wheeler out to the spot. Aaron was right, the birds were everywhere and we got into shooting the moment we sat down. After about 10 minutes of fast shooting it started to rain. Well, there’s the 30% chance (Friday morning’s forecast)….hopefully it won’t last long. About another 10 minutes later it started to downpour, and it was miserable. For some stupid reason I left my rain gear at home, I just didn’t think it’d rain that much. I guess I’m gullible and put too much trust in meteorology. The birds stopped moving and we started to hear heavy thunder. That was it for me. Hanging out in the field with shotguns in hand and lightning around wasn’t my idea of a good time. We loaded up and went back to the trucks. I was soaking wet from head to toe, as was everyone else. As we pulled off all of our gear, the rain never stopped. We started to realize this was a bit more than a simple rainstorm, so we headed to town for some breakfast until it passed through. We pulled into Wimbledon…no power. Zach (Decoyer) and Tyler (Goosebuster3) headed to Jamestown for gas (since the pumps were out of order) as we headed to Courtney for eggs. There was no power in Courtney either but they were running a gas grill in the bar….sweet! When we pulled in the bar there was my good friend Doug Panchot, along with his father and Chris Pezalla, another hunting companion of mine. They too, had a decoy spread out and were waiting out the rain. We joked around, had full bellies and became anxious to get back out. Let’s not waste any more time…let’s go!

The rain had slowed to a slight trickle, and stayed that way for about an hour. I was going to call into North Dakota Outdoors with Doug Leier in a half hour, so I just hung out by the road. When the show began, it hadn’t rained for an hour so I was ready to get back out. As soon as I was off the air, we were packed and ready for round 2. After a mile-long walk, we settled in our blinds. Almost as soon as I loaded my shotgun it started raining again. And I’m not talking just any rain, HEAVY rain with high winds and terrible lightning. It caught us off guard and we couldn’t do anything but hunker down in our blinds and wait it out. As I looked around there was 6 of us all fighting to have a good time, which was nearly impossible. As I started joking to the guys about our poor luck, I was interrupted by loud lightning just a mile away. To heck with this I thought, and I was up and out. Some of the guys wanted to stay and wait, so we looked to start adjusting our spread quickly. The sheet water’s edge was 300 yards away yesterday, but by this time it was up to the edge of the spread. I worried about the gear when it came up so we pulled our blinds up along the side of the hill as well as the e-callers. As soon as that was accomplished we were hightailing to the trucks as the lightning and heavy rain was still all around us. As we got back to the trucks, soaked and feeling defeated we decided today wasn’t the day. We toyed with the idea of picking up the spread but with the bad weather we just didn’t feel it was right. We’ll come back early the next morning and start over….agreed.

That night there was not much to do so we picked up some beer and dinner and hung out at the cabin on Lake Ashtabula. It was hard to have a good time as it was still raining and I had a horrible pit in my stomach. I would look at Jed (gandergrinder) and ask him what condition he thought the decoys were in but I could tell he had the same pit as me. We weren’t real hot on talking about it, what can we do other than wait until the morning? We turned in early that night for some much needed rest for the next day.

For the second day in a row, we were on the move to the spot late. Even though we got up 30 minutes earlier we somehow found a way to drag ourselves out late. On our way there we saw that the geese were already on the move, despite the heavy winds and low clouds. There was some sprinkling going on, but no heavy rain. The further we drove west, the more sheet water was in the fields. This can’t be good I thought, and the pit grew worse. For the second day in a row, Aaron calls my cell, “3,000 geese just landed on our spread where are you guys?! Not to worry though, the spread is in trouble. Just wait ‘til you get here.”

The spread after the storm

When we arrived, Jed and I decided we should survey the spread first before deciding what to do. Everyone agreed. We hoped on the front of the 4-wheeler and headed to the south towards our spot. From a distance I could clearly see this sheet water resembled nothing like the day before, but resembled Lake Agassiz more. As we came over the hill the worse case scenario became reality. Out of our 1400 decoys, only around 300 were visible. The rest were just barely sticking out of the water or were washed up on shore. It looked bad enough that hunting just wasn’t enjoyable, and decided to just get out of there. They were predicting another rainstorm after noon and nobody wanted to get caught in that again. Lucky for us (if it’s even possible to be lucky at this point), the wind was blowing in from the west, which meant all of the loose decoys floating to our shore. This alone probably saved half of our decoy spread from floating away (but we still lost some anyways). Little by little, we picked up our spread. I can’t even describe the feeling of reaching underwater to pick up one of your brand new windsocks, which we built from scratch and had only been used twice.  Jed took the flag and was using it as a shovel, to dig through cattail debris looking for windsock bodies. I took off on a long hike down the shoreline and had more stray decoys than I could carry. It was an indescribable mess. And to make it worse, there were geese EVERYWHERE around us and of course, nothing we could do about it.

After we packed up we drove around checking out all of the birds, but nobody was having a good time, it just wasn’t our weekend to hunt. We have 1300 decoys that need to be cleaned, dried and repaired…let’s just go home.

Spring hunting isn’t for the weak, but what does that mean when you have no luck?

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There are moments of waterfowling that you can’t really put into words. An explosion of geese on the horizon that just keeps growing and growing until it’s all around you, literally. Instantly, childhood memories of hunting snow geese had reappeared. And I’m sure some of those same geese I hunted when I was a kid are still flying around enjoying the morning with me. The good old days were in the now. This was my first of what will be many trips to Saskatchewan, and this is how it started.

We witnesses 6 to 8 inches of snow fall on the area we planned to hunt. With a few phone calls and emails, we were all pointed in another direction. We decided on a new base camp off of a few tips, and thought it was a good starting point. With the Suburban and the trailer loaded, we were on our way. In Saskatchewan, it’s illegal to hunt on Sunday so that was the day we chose to leave.

After getting a good night’s rest, we headed out onto the horizon to start our scouting. This was everyone’s first time hunting this area, so we planned to literally do a 360 degree rotation around our base camp. I would have to say one of the most exciting moments of every trip, is seeing your first tornado. I always find scouting to be half the fun of hunting, and clouds of snow geese are my favorite kind. We find some decent feeds of snows, and accidentally stumbled upon a roost of canadas, but kept moving on for whiter pastures. We started to turn back when a large cloud in the distance caught my eye. We decided to pursue it and sure enough, we lucked out. Within an hour and a half of scouting we found the mother load, with strings of birds engulfing the sky in every direction. There were so many birds that they had to spread out for 10 miles. We never left this area the next 4 days.

With the complete lack of hunting pressure, and next to no road hunters, I can see why the birds hold up there as long as possible. We only saw one other hunter all week that wasn’t decoying, and he was pass shooting a few off the flight path. The birds aren’t threatened from vehicles, as it appeared nobody hunted off the roads. In fact, we had to constantly slow down to avoid running over geese. This is a luxury to decoy hunters. And with all the land in the area wide open for hunters, it makes scouting easy. We used Rural Municipality maps and asked every landowner we could find for permission. They were all extremely nice and helpful, and amazingly enough, nobody had ever tried snow geese?

We found our spot for the morning by 11 a.m. We decided to go back and eat, and try an easy evening shoot. All day hunting up there had just started and we couldn’t hold our anticipation any longer. We picked a field that was holding birds, and was at the tail end of the flight path. We set up 100 rags, and lay in the decoys in whites. We’re ground blind fanatics, so I haven’t done this in years. The weather was relatively warm, in the middle 40’s (remember, North Dakotan writing here). Birds came consistently for the next hour, and we got our first taste of decoyable birds. 23 birds hit the ground that night, and probably double got a good laugh on their way to the next field. We picked up early, and caught glimpses of a great Saskatchewan sunset disappear behind the neighboring abandoned farm house. We never saw another hunter or heard a shot all night.

The next morning we set up in a barley field a couple miles down the flight path from us the prior evening. There were so many birds we didn’t worry about disturbing a few the night before. We put out about 400 decoys, a collage of windsocks, shells, rags, and goose magnets. We got into the blinds this morning, and spent a long time making them disappear. At first light, the scout flocks started to make their runs. With the help of a couple ecallers, small flocks of snow geese started appearing from the south of us. There wasn’t too much wind, so I expected a lot of circling by the geese in route to our landing zone. Boy was I wrong. Juveniles don’t have the patience or the knowledge to check out a decoy spread, to them the dinner bell is ringing. The birds would “shuck” into the spread so fast you had to let them circle. And once one started shucking, it’s like it turned into a race as to which goose would land first. This made for mostly clean harvests, with an occasional cripple which we ran down. As the morning ends we start picking up the spread, only to be bombarded with yet more geese. At this point I can only laugh, is this goose heaven or what?

Wednesday morning brought us our first competition of the trip. We chose a wheat field, and a mile between us and the roost was a group in a pea field. On the other end of our field a trailer pulled up, and started preparing for the morning as well. It just so happened that the few decoy parties of the area had all chosen the same flyway. But that’s hunting so we thought we’d give the morning a go like every other. It just didn’t matter. We had probably 3 times the numbers in the flyway that morning compared to the morning before. There was pretty much circling birds over us at 50 yards for 2 hours straight. Singles and doubles would swing at 10 yards…than land, only to bring the rest of the flock. They were working the landing zone we chose perfectly. The birds would bank over us in their final approach. I was wearing ear plugs and the screeching sound of thousands of snow geese was unbearable.  A few hours later we were lying next to 76 geese. A warden made his way into our spread that morning and everything as clean. We chatted with him for awhile and he spoke of a grim future for Saskatchewan waterfowling. The words he spoke kind of spoiled the morning, as he told tails of poaching and blatant breaking of the law. We headed back to the hotel for a long period of cleaning, and literally fell asleep the second we hit the pillow

Thursday turned out to be our final morning of the trip. We had planned on staying until Saturday, but after the morning hunt, we had experienced enough. We were pretty tired that morning, as 3 days straight of hardcore hunting can be pretty draining. We chose to only set out a fraction of our decoys that morning, and keep the spread more manageable. It was a very cold morning, with temps in the teens. There was hardly a cloud in the sky, and barely a breath of wind.  The birds were late that morning, as we didn’t see any geese until almost sunup. The first scout flock of four came over our spread, only to take a circle and exit. In most mornings of snow goose hunting, how the first birds react can foreshadow the patterns of the morning, but not on this day. The strings started coming at us in every direction. It appeared that there was another roost that we didn’t anticipate that was feeding into our field. The first approaching birds started shucking, and then birds from all sides started doing the same. We let dozens fly over at 20 yards, only to reassure the birds in the back of the flock to come lower. We pull up on a group of 6 that mistook our blinds as a place to land. From that moment on, I swear it’s a blur.  Not 30 seconds went by where there wasn’t a bird with it’s feet down in front of us. It was incredible! And as I looked off into the horizon, there was just no end to the approaching birds. After about 45 minutes of hunting, we called a time out. We collected our game and figured out the cushion of our limit. It only took another 10 minutes to call the morning. The birds continued to dive bomb the spread as we picked up for 30 minutes. What a rush! We knew right away when we sat and looked at our 81 birds (1 canada), that the week was over. We were about 30 shy of our possession limit, and felt that there was no need to take home that many birds. That hour of hunting will always be a story. In 15 years of hard hunting, I’d never had an experience like that. I don’t think I could’ve shot another goose, I was all goosed out. 

The memories that will always stick with me are the vast tracks of open land, the amounts of geese, and the peace and quiet atmosphere of hunting that we seek out every season. When the opportunities are endless, you can only wonder why the amounts of resident and nonresident hunter numbers in the province are declining. It’s a goose hunter’s paradise.

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Who would think that there is actually a “down side” to having the luxury of a lot of time to hunt? The problem is that it may be difficult to get enough hunting partners to accompany you. My hunting partners usually set aside one long weekend a year to hunt geese in North Dakota. The rest of their vacation time is dedicated to opening weekends for ducks and deer in Minnesota and long weekend fishing trips to the Rainy River. Lately, I have added another partner so that if I want to make a second trip, I will have a companion.

The year 1999 was one of those years where I ran out of hunting partners before I ran out of the desire or legal days to hunt. That year was somewhat different than most years because our group decided to try Canada after a rather frustrating year in 1998 in North Dakota. Our goose harvest numbers had been declining steadily for several years. We wanted to see if the pastures actually were greener on the other side of the Peace Garden. We had been hearing the same old story for years – “Well, the snows are just across the border in Canada, eh.”

That year, we tested the theory. The locals were right. The birds do stage big-time up at Whitewater Lake. There were virtually no birds on the south side of the border and thousands just 20 miles north of the border around the 10th of October. Even with a lot of birds, we were not very successful. Oh, there were guys that came down the highway and saw our camp and stopped to admire what we had. But, it really wasn’t much.

The weather did not really cooperate on that trip. First it rained on us for two mornings. Then, when it looked like we had hit the mother lode in a harvested pea field, the third morning dawned sunny and calm. Our windsocks drooped in a sad sort of way. The huge flocks came off the roost and sniffed our decoys but would not finish. Even the incredible number of ducks didn’t swing quite right over our decoys. We decided to pull up stakes at the local motel and head back to the States a day early. We observed lots of local ducks in North Dakota’s potholes and roadside ditches on our way home.

I  passed the Ludden, North Dakota area to see what might be sitting on the James River. There was nothing there yet. I headed further west and did find an isolated flock of birds. I scouted the flock and watched them fly a very short distance to an adjacent field to feed. I got permission to hunt that field and set up on Friday morning. This flock must have been part of the same bunch that gave Ken and me so much trouble the week before up near Alice. They paid no attention to my decoy spread.

Frustrated again, I headed for Perkins in Jamestown for a late breakfast. Hmm. Those pancakes were good. Then, it was on toward Harvey and maybe Rugby to see what was going on in that area.

Many flocks of snows began to appear as I approached the Rugby area from the south. I decided that this would be the place for the weekend hunt. I dropped my hunting trailer and checked into the hotel before starting my serious scouting because I knew that I would not be back in town until pretty late.

Just a short distance out of town, the chase was on. The area around Rugby can be hard to scout because of the rolling terrain. Roads rarely follow the mile grid. Birds can actually get “lost” because the scouting hunter has to drive so far out of his way to get around the ranges of hills and wetlands. This is especially true when you are hunting alone and cannot keep your eye on the flocks as you are driving. However, I was finally able to isolate a flock and select a field in which to hunt the next morning. I recognized the truck of one of the Devils Lake guides who was scouting for geese in this area even though he had all kinds of leased land much closer to Devils Lake. So, I figured that I must be in the right place.

Saturday morning appeared to be a good one for hunting. The pre-dawn sky was clear, but the wind was supposed to build to around 20 mph.

I never like getting out of the car to start putting out decoys when I am by myself. It is awfully lonely out there in the middle of nowhere. I did have my golden retriever, Kirby, to follow me around as I put out the dekes. I could only put out a limited number in the hour or so that I had allotted for this task. There were about 200 Northwinds and shells deployed in a 100 yard long crescent shape. I would sit in the middle and hope for some good shots.

By the time I finished with the first round of setting up the decoys, the wind had really come up and was blowing so hard some of my flimsy shells were turning over along with some of the windsocks. I had to make another pass through the decoys to get them ready for action.

Tony Dean came on over the local radio station at about 5 minutes before seven as I drove the truck and trailer out of the field to hide them behind the grove of trees near the road. His voice was comforting and it felt like I had an old friend out in the field with me. I wasn’t quite so alone now.

Tony wasn’t the only company I had by then. There was a pretty good-sized flock of snows making a racket on the roost pond out to the west, behind me. If I got any shooting, it would probably be from those birds.

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The 2000 trip to North Dakota was nothing less than spectacular. Though there were not many geese around on the second weekend of October, the ducks were everywhere and in big concentrations.

Jerry Vandelac and I experienced an uneventful trip until we got to the Munich area. It was there that we experienced white-out conditions on October 5. Acting on a tip from Chris Hustad, we were headed for the Sarles area. Unfortunately, there were no geese there, if there ever had been. We scouted a few areas and dropped off at a familiar pothole. We popped a couple of birds from the cattails, but there was not much going on.

We were found that Thursday night in Cando by our friend Chuck Gosen from Bismarck who had conveniently arranged business activities in that part of the state.

The next morning, the three of us headed back to the familiar pothole. A few more ducks were bagged. While there, a few snow geese flew overhead, but there were not huntable numbers. After lunch in Rock Lake, we split up for afternoon scouting. I went by myself and Chuck and Jerry, the two snow goose hunting rookies, headed for parts unknown to see what they could find.

It turned out that the rookies found the big concentration of mallards. “You should have seen this slough,” Jerry said. “It had so many ducks on it, I thought it was just dry dirt clumps … until the dirt clumps started flying away.” Chuck and Jerry were able to sneak right up to the edge and shoot a handful of greenheads.

That evening we were joined by Kenny Ziegler and Mike Ferber. They got into town late because the old 1984 Suburban finally died just north of Fargo. Bucking the wind was just too much for the old horse. They had to turn around and go all the way back to Detroit Lakes and transfer the gear to Ferb’s small Toyota.

On Saturday morning the five of us set up goose and duck decoys in a field near the pond that Jerry and Chuck had sneaked the night before. There were many fly-bys from birds on the adjacent pond. But, they were headed elsewhere for breakfast.

One of the guys went down to the pond and shot a few. But, we picked up rather disappointed in the morning’s efforts. On the way back toward Cando, we ran into the only other hunters that we saw all weekend. They were putting the sneak on a field full of mallards and pintails. Unfortunately, the ducks were just over a little hill. We did not see the birds until we drove over the hilltop. Yup, we scared them up and ruined the sneak. (Those guys would never have gotten close enough anyway.)

As it turned out, the field was adjacent to three sloughs. The birds began circling the three ponds. The five of us split up and covered the three ponds after getting permission from the farmer just down the road. We squeezed out a few more birds. Old Kirby, my golden retriever made his first ice retrieve. He broke ice, one foot at a time until he made the twenty-yard retrieve. I was really proud of how that timid dog handled the breaking ice.

That Saturday afternoon, we went back to the tri-pond complex. KZ and Ferb shot close to a limit of ducks on their pond. Jerry and I scratched out four more. As we sat next to our little pond, we could see string after string of ducks headed a mile or two to the east to a field to feed. About, an hour or so later, some hunters must have spooked the birds because they got up en masse. As I looked to the east, the whole darkening eastern sky under the bill of my cap was peppered with ducks. It took about five minutes for the parade of flocks to pass virtually over our heads while going back to their roost to the west of us. What a sight!

Sunday, we set up our field decoys in the field adjacent to the ponds where all the ducks had been the morning before. Bust. Only a couple of birds even gave us a look. We went back over to Jerry and Chuck’s pond about five miles away. It was empty too.

That night we split up again. KZ and Ferb returned to the tri-pond complex and took a half dozen ducks. Jerry and I deployed our robo-duck on a large wetland near Snyder Lake. The robo attracted birds from way over on the north end of the wetland. They came one or two at a time and provided shooting every few minutes. We left with several ducks. But, Jerry, a regular trap and skeet shooter, was really upset about his shooting. He missed a lot of very close shots. Must have been the new gun!

After taking count on Sunday night, we had about 12 birds to go for a possession limit. We decided to go back to Jerry and Chuck’s pond and give it one more try to see if it could produce as it did for them on Friday night. We had let it “rest“ for two days. There was a thin red strip of pink in the eastern sky as we turned from the gravel road onto the field road and edged toward the top of the hill where we could see the pond. We could just barely see that strings of ducks were already lifting off the pond headed out to feed. We looked at our watches and figured we’ed be at the pond at just about shooting time if we waited just a while longer.

We spread out and started the sneak. It was getting lighter now and more ducks could be seen getting off the pond. 200 yards, 150 yards, 100 yards. Now, we could see the surface of the water. It was still covered with ducks despite those that had already left. 75 yards. That’s about how far we got before a significant number of birds figured out that the sneak was on. They knew something was up, but they still could not really see us crouching in the plowed field. Pretty soon, the first birds started departing the pond. Some flew right over our heads. The flames shot from the gun barrels ejecting steel shot hoping to connect with birds seeking escape in the pale dawn. Birds began to drop in the fields. We did the best we could to mark those birds as we sprinted for the edge of the cattails where we could hide. More birds swung over us. Many shots were passed up so as to not drop the birds in the cattails where they might not be found and to make sure we were only shooting greenheads.

Still more birds peeled off the slough. And, more birds fell to the four of us who were spread out over about 60 yards along the edge of the cattails. In about 10 minutes, it was all over. It was one of the most memorable, fast and furious opening few minutes that I had ever experienced.

Though not sure, we knew we were close to our limit. It was not even close to sunrise yet. We dropped our guns and started looking for downed birds that were lying in the adjacent fields. After a considerable effort on one bird, we had them all in the bag.

It was about this time that the landowner who had given us permission to hunt a few days before paid us a little visit. He was mad as hell. He had seen my trailer and thought his field was being invaded by an outfitter. He had seen the back of my trailer that read, “Goose Hunting” and a phone number. Those were the last letters remaining from the advertising that had originally been on the trailer. It had been previously owned by a construction contractor and goose hunter. I had not quite finished peeling off all the stick on letters on the trailer.

After a lot of explaining, the redness finally started to leave our host’s face when we gave him our reference in Cando who would vouch that we were just city employees out on a free-lance hunt over the Columbus Day weekend.

We started our long journey back to Detroit Lakes and the Twin Cities early that Columbus Day. Thursday’s snowy white-out had turned into a rain of greenheads over the weekend.

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I  suppose that most towns in the popular hunting areas of North Dakota have one. I am referring to a hunting shack that sits vacant the whole year accept for a few weeks during hunting season. This is a story about one of those places that we called the Hilton. The Hilton was the highfalutin name applied to a hunting shack in Churchs Ferry owned by a hunting team out of Grand Forks. It was the most god-awful place I have ever seen. But, the sign above the garage did say, “The Hilton.”

My first exposure to the Hilton was in 1976. Russ Fortner and I had survived car trouble on our way from Grand Forks and rolled into the Hilton’s grass covered driveway sometime after midnight. Our friend in Grand Forks had given us directions to get there and told us how to get in. We pulled open the unlocked outside door and passed through the littered entryway and into the kitchen. We pushed the ancient light button and the kitchen light came on. It was a single bulb that hung from a 12-inch cord in the ceiling. At least the old place still had electricity.

The kitchen was not in too bad a condition yet. But, nothing worked. There was no water and the stove was out-of-order. There were torn shades half covering the windows. The sink was full of dirt and dirty dishes that someone had used untold years ago. There was still a table with a metal border and three chairs with red padded seats. A few pieces of ceiling plaster lay on the floor. The vacant places where the plaster once formed the ceiling had other cracked pieces that looked like they could fall at any time.

The dark living room was to the right of the kitchen. Its sparse furnishings included one bunk bed and mattresses and a couch. The parlor beyond the living room had another bunk bed as did the one tiny bedroom beyond the parlor. In the middle of the floor between the parlor and living room was an old oil burning space heater. There was one floor lamp without a shade in the corner. The floor was real spongy.

It was cold that night in mid-October when we checked into the Hilton. Unfortunately, the heat had not been turned on in anticipation of our late arrival. We fiddled with the shut off valve and listened for the dripping oil falling into the combustion chamber. Nothing. We went outside and found the fuel oil tank and turned the valve. Sure enough, the fuel line started to drip. We put a match to a piece of Kleenex and threw it into the stove. Magically, it lit. It wasn’t long before the chill was off in the sleeping area.

My last stay at the Hilton was in 1982. My brother-in-law, Don Carlson, and I got permission to stay there and planned to hunt for a week starting October 12th. We experienced our first snowfall of the season on our way out to the shack on a Sunday. It was darned cold. Even though the Hilton was a wreck, it would at least be fairly warm and dry after we fired up the heater. Or, so we thought! When we got to the Hilton, we found that the door was locked. We had to crawl through the front porch window and across that badly sagging floor. There was virtually no ceiling left in the kitchen. The valve to the heater was opened and we threw in a small piece of burning Kleenex. We tried another match or two and listened for the oil to drip. There was no response. We figured that the valve was turned off at the outside tank. As we went outside and rounded the corner of the house we discovered that the fuel tank had tipped over and that the fuel line had been crimped. Apparently, the heavy rains of that summer and early fall had softened the ground so much that the tank toppled over. Now what? Push the tank back up? No, too heavy. We only had two choices. Either we would try to find a motel room in Devils Lake or we would “tough it out” with no heat. Devils Lake was too far from where we wanted to hunt and it was unlikely that there would be rooms anyway. So, we decided to make do.

That afternoon, we went out scouting and did a little hunting. It rained. It was a very cold rain. We got soaked. Without any heat, we would have to sit at Pat’s Place for a long time to dry out. The Hilton did have a great location. We only had to walk across the railroad tracks to get to the local tavern. It took about four beers to get dried out enough so that we could go back to the Hilton and crawl in our sleeping bags. We spent four cold nights in the Hilton that year. That was the last time. The next year, our friend in Cando moved back from a job in Hallock, Minnesota. Ever since, we have had the good fortune to be able to stay with him. It’s always warm and dry there.

Years later, I spied the old Hilton sign hanging above a building on a farm place on the east side of Lake Irvine. It looked like the farm resident had picked the sign from the Hilton and relocated it. Maybe, he had been a member of the volunteer fire department that burned down the Hilton as a training exercise for the fire fighters. The town had finally had enough of the Hilton and reduced it to ashes.

No, hunting is not like the good old days anymore. I do miss the snow geese that used to be around in far greater numbers. But, I sure sleep better in a nice place these days. It has no glamorous name like the Hilton. We just call it Mike’s Place.

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The most severe storm that I experienced during the mild winter of 2001-2002 occurred in late October. It had a huge impact on our hunting that weekend. The trip started off in a big snowstorm and ended in another kind of snow-storm.

You remember the storm don’t you? It was the one that tied up traffic for 15 miles south of Grand Forks on a Wednesday night. I can remember lying in bed that night on the eve of our trip and listening to the wind whip the crab apple tree outside my window against the side of house. I laid there thinking, “Boy, I wonder how many geese are being blown from Canada all the way to Texas in this howler?” As it turned out, a search of reports on the Internet revealed that, indeed, there were birds blown all the way to Texas that showed up right before their opener on the following weekend.

Jerry Vandelac and I left the northern Twin Cities suburbs before 7 a.m. on Thursday morning after that night of howling winds. We were pulling a 10 foot enclosed trailer with our Explorer. The roads were wet but there was no snow yet. However, by the time we got to Alexandria, the first snow of the season was clinging to the windshield. Shortly, thereafter, the Explorer went into four-wheel drive and stayed there until Jamestown. Occasionally, there was a car or truck in the ditch. Just outside of Moorhead, a semi, 200 feet in front of us, started sliding toward the median. Fortunately, the skill of the driver kept the big rig on the road.

And, so it went until just outside of Jamestown where the sun was out and the roads were almost free of ice. We took U.S. 281 from there and headed toward Churchs Ferry. It wasn’t long before we were back onto snow pack and ice. The drifts in the ditches were two feet deep.

Devils Lake at Minnewaukan was a sparkling jewel in the mid afternoon sunshine. Blue bills bobbed on the light chop of the bays close to the road. There was only a hunter or two out there trying to get at them.

About 4:30, we got to the area where we wanted to start scouting. We had not seen any geese all day. We traveled the big scouting circle out to Hurricane Lake, then north to Mylo, back east to Bisbee, and into Cando. The results of the big circle revealed one lonesome string of about 25 snow geese. But, at least the fields had less snow in them the farther north we went. If there were birds the next day, we would be able to get into the fields.

Our friend and host in Cando was serving as score-keeper at the girl’s basketball sectional game. We found our way into the game through the back door of the Cando gym and stopped to say hello and then headed over to his house to unpack some of our gear.

Friday morning, we got up a little later than usual because we had no place to hunt. We drove up to Rock Lake and got there just as it was getting light enough to see. A few ducks were swimming in the freezing open water. We shut off the engine and rolled down the windows to listen. There was a faint murmur of snow geese on the far north end of the lake. But, it was obvious that there were not many there.

So, we decided to head west. We went through Rolla and out to Lord’s Lake. There was nothing but a couple of swans on the lake that was 80% frozen. We went through Bottineau and out on to the Souris plain to see what might be at J. Clark Salyer. Froze solid. An abandoned dark suburban was mired in snow up to the top of wheels in a ditch near Kramer. We headed back east and got to Willow City in time for lunch. It was the town café’s last day. Several camouflaged hunters showed up to pay their last respects and chat with the cook-proprietor of another dying rural business. Sad deal.

The number of geese in the area was also a sad deal. North of Rugby, we did see a couple of flocks that were flying high, fast, and heading south. It was then that we made up our minds to abandon our traditional area for the southern part of the state. I had a hunch that there might be some birds down south if they had not all been blown to Desoto Bend (Iowa) or even to Texas. I had monitored the Internet on the day of the storm and noticed that the roads south of Jamestown were only wet, not icy and snow packed. Maybe there would be open fields there. We would head for Ludden and see what we could find. If there was nothing there, we would just keep on going and get back to Minneapolis late enough to scare my wife out of bed.

So, we bid our host in Cando goodbye and headed for Jamestown. Unfortunately, we did not make very good time because the roads were still icy and rutted. We only had about an hour and a half of scouting time when we got to Jamestown. But, sure enough, just south of Jamestown the snow disappeared and lush green fields reappeared. (Is this heaven? No, just North Dakota.) We were just about to turn east toward Fullerton when I spied what I thought was a big, dark cloud of honkers off to the southwest. Jerry set the brakes and I focused the binoculars on the horizon. They were not honkers! They were the first significant flock of snows that we had seen on the whole trip. As the glasses scanned the horizon, several more flocks appeared. Then, there were flocks everywhere. It looked as though we had found the mother lode.

Soon, it was like trying to figure out which chocolate to pick out of Forest Gump’s box of assorted chocolates. There were so many fields to pick from and absolutely no competition! Nobody knew where the birds were yet after the big storm. We eventually selected a choice field and got permission by phone to hunt the land. The corn stubble field sat adjacent to two roost ponds that had birds on them.

That night we stayed at the Dacha House, a nice B and B southwest of Ellendale. Ellendale was full of pheasant hunters.

Our trusty GPS lead us back in pitch-blackness to the field we had selected. The roost ponds were roaring with noise from the huge flocks of geese occupying them. I hoped that our field location would not be too close to disturb the birds while we set up our field decoys. I also hoped that no local kids would jump the ponds in the morning and scare away the mother lode.

We set our 250 Northwinds on the upwind side of our spread in a fairly tightly packed triangle. There were no family groups here! Trailing downwind from the socks were two long lines of shell decoys and my new Last Look decoys. A 40-yard clear alley separated the two lines. Jerry and I set our low profile blinds on the downwind ends of the two lines. We hoped that the snows would choose to fly up the alley toward the mass of tantalizing windsocks.

Jerry and I dove into our blinds as shooting time neared and a nice breeze put life into the windsocks. We were to the southeast of the pond with the wind at our back. Almost immediately we had action. A single snow rose from the roost pond a quarter mile away and quartered the wind toward our set. Soon, he was lined up with our decoys and coming in toward my right side. A little flutter of the goose flag and he was committed. When the faint early morning light revealed his feet, he was only about 25 yards virtually straight up. My one shot broke the dawn’s silence. The flock on the roost pond started to roar as the lone goose plummeted to the ground. But, the big flock was not spooked from the pond. They circled a few times and sat back down on the pond. I softly yelled over to Jerry and said, “It looks like we got it just right. With any luck we should get small bunches like that all morning long.”

The words were no more than out of my mouth when another bunch started our way. They also headed for the windsocks a hundred yards upwind from us. Another bird was taken from the small bunch as only Jerry got shooting at this group. This scene was repeated often that morning. In an hour we had eight birds on the ground. “Hey, this is looking pretty good,” I said. The pace was not fast and furious, but it was very steady.

As the morning wore on, the wind started to really blow. Not only did we have a great spot, but we had the wind to go along with it. Even the bright sunshine could not deter the geese from heading toward our spread. By noon, we had 23 birds.

Jerry took a break and headed for the car to get some snacks and the dog that we had left in the car all morning. Poor Kirby, the golden retriever, had missed out on all the fun. But, I figured, “What the heck can he screw up now? We already have a boat load of birds. They don’t fly much in the afternoon anyway.”

Boy, was I wrong! Old Kirby got a great afternoon workout retrieving another 17 birds. Just before the sun set about 6:30, we got our 40th bird of the day. What a day!! It was the first time that I had been part of a party limit of that magnitude. We were pumped. We had hit it just right.

Even cleaning the birds was not a dreadful chore that Saturday night. Our euphoria was aided by a sheltered spot in the yard at the B and B and a nice yard light where we could gut the birds and put them on ice.

Sunday morning’s pre-dawn was absolutely beautiful. The aurora borealis danced in the northern sky as we got ready for another shoot. The breakfast supplied by the Dacha House was eaten in our blinds as we waited for legal shooting time. The morning started much as Saturday morning did. Another eight birds were taken by 9:30. But, then things began to fall apart. First the local boys “found” the roost pond and blasted all the birds off the pond. That moved most of the birds out of the area. Then, the wind became light and variable and eventually died before it shifted and destroyed the orientation of our setup. Oh well, we had had enough. It was time to go home.

Our snowstorm weekend had turned into a real snow-storm – one with white wings, honks, squeaks, and squawks. It was a trip that I will never forget. It almost didn’t happen.

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