[nodakoutdoors.com]

It started out as a rough weekend. We knew our birds had been feeding the same field for at least 6 days, but we didn't anticipate the storm. I don't know exactly what goes on in their heads after a big storm like the one we got Sat. night...but it really messed them up Sunday morning. Almost all of the birds, well, went the other direction. We did manage 3 singles, and we dumped 8 out of another group...but that was the morning.

This is Doug Panchot (far right) and his buddies, Tim and Nathan.

While hunting Sun. morning, we could kind of see where all of the birds were heading. We were able to pack up just in time so I could see where the birds were coming from. We got permission, and had a lazy afternoon grilling some of our harvests.

That evening, we had to make a decision. Do we hunt the field they went to that morning, or hunt the field that they were feeding for 6 days.....tough one, so we split up. Myself, Maverick and Old Hunter hunted the field they fed that morning....Eric and Doug hunted the field we hunted that morning.

Here's our blinds that evening.

It was REALLY hot that evening, so the birds came off almost an hour and a half later than normal. But when they came, it was fast action for about 10-15 minutes. We had to stop shooting in fear that we were getting too close to our limit, and there was dead birds everywhere. We even landed a flock of about 20 about 15 feet in front of our blinds. That made up for the slow morning for sure!

Here's Maverick with some evening stacking. I didn't get any pictures of all the birds Eric and Doug harvested...probably goose fajitas by now.

Great start to the season.

 

[Madison]

NICE Pics!!! Nice to see you ND boyz puttin the smackdown....

P.s>Maverick its all gravy with the Blue sunglass case....

Keep it reel
madison

 

[gandergrinder]

I have to say that this weekend was a major bust for our group. We only managed to pick up 4 on Sunday. The field we wanted to be in had around 500 birds but the landowner would not give anyone permission. So the geese sat in the "refuge" all weekend and ate untill they were happy. The backup field had around 50 geese in it but only one flock returned. Monday was spent scouting. Oh well.

 

[Maverick]

Well it was a pretty good weekend, but then when is it not when you have the squad such as ours! It's almost unfair. We just sound to real and look to good to resist. Our only problem was the fact we were to tired the next day to keep going, and maybe Erick and his safety. He has some troubles turning it off when he shoots?

Madison , Sorry about the sunglasses incedent, i guess my short-term memory isn't the best( if you know what I mean) Anyways I'm stupid! and forgetful so the next time we hunt or fish :beer: are on me!!
till then "keep it real" like always!!
Maverick
P.S. keep your heads up, they come out of no where?

 

[Maverick]

P.S. those blinds where the ****!! I think I spent more time unconscious in them, than conscious.
CLICK CLICK BOOM!!!

 

[Matt Jones]

We got our 8-man limit sunday morning in a couple hours, what a day! Chris, how do I post pics?

 

[Eric Hustad]

What a great day out hunting. Met some new people and had a great shoot. Maverick I was just passing some shots so you guy could get the practice 8) It was real treat hunting with your dad as well, and the calling was awesome. Two spreads was the way to go Sun. night as Doug and I had a great time. Till next time.....

 

[duxnbux]

Overall we had a pretty good opening day, but surprisingly we found two forms of competition.
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The first was field work by the farmers.
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I had been scouting for the past two weeks. I had narrowed down the opener to two different fields, both had over 125 geese, coming in small family groups. Perfect! Friday night and Saturday morning I found the same, however Saturday ended up being a good day to dig/disc the fields we were planning on hunting. Both of the fields were worked by the farmers and the geese did not return to either on Saturday night at were scattered in 6 different fields in the area, therefore we had to go to plan C for Sunday Morning.
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Plan C ended up being really good, but this is were we found our second competition. We had permission from the land owner and the land was posted. We had just finished setting up where the geese had been feeding in the field when we saw headlights on the east end of the section we were hunting. Sure enough another group of hunters must have also gotten permission to hunt in the field. They were setting up directly between us and the location the geese were roosting. They ended up taking a lot of shots on geese that undoubtably would have ended up in our spread, they ended up with 25 birds for 5 guys. Our group ended up with 16 geese, no doubt our birds were intercepted by the other group, but that's goose hunting. Overall not a bad opener but could have definately been better.
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Day 2
Monday once again we found competition, we were setup in a field about 1 mile from the roost. Some other hunters must have done a sneak on the roost, because about 5 minutes after legal shooting hours it sounded like world war III around the roost and the geese scattered in every direction, not to return. We didn't fire a shot all morning and didn't see any of the birds feeding in a 2 mile radius of that roost. It's too bad more hunters don't realize if you leave a roost alone birds will stay in the area. I wish they'd understand that if they leave the roost alone and hunt the fields the birds will stay in the area and provide hunting opportunities throughout the season!

 

[duxnbux]

2002 Early Goose Opener was also Mosquito Madness! Wow!

 

[nodakoutdoors.com]

Matt,

If you want to post pics, here's what you do. First create a photo album at: http://www.nodakoutdoors.com/members/phpBB/viewgallery.php

You need to make sure the photo isn't larger than 800 pixels in width or height, and they need to be saved in jpeg format or png. From there, just click on your photo in the album to view it in it's actual size.

While in it's actual size, right click the photo and click "properties". The URL in the properties is the actual location to your photo on my server. The easiest thing to do is to highlight the entire URL and right click your mouse and hit "copy".

From there you can paste the URL in-between these two symbols while typing in the forum

[url]URL goes here[/url]

and your pics will show up.

 

[muskat]

Opening weekend was less than impressive for my group. We finally found a decent field to set up in Saturday(about 150 geese that came in family groups).
I was really disappointed to hear gun shots at the crack of dawn towards the roost :eyeroll: . Needless to say the geese scattered, with only a pair headed our direction. We ended up with two. WOW was I ****** off. I dont know how many hours of scouting I did in the past week. Since I had to work Sunday at 12 and Monday at 8, my weekend was shot. The only relief for me was a good night out at the Turf.

Maybe next weekend.

 

[Wood Duck]

Our Wis opener was Tues AM. My son and I set up in a small oat stubble field. Only had 70 geese in the field the evening before but no other hunters and no firing line at the roost! We easily bagged our 3 bird limits and had 3 more small bunches working the dekes before we could get out of there.

 

[Qwack]

Had a good opening weekend in SoDak. Didn't find any big concentrations on Sat so we went to a field that had had some geese in it. Sunday morning we got set up and went to park the trucks. We could see a thunderstorm getting closer so we sat in the trucks while the layouts, guns, and gear got rained on hard. About sunrise the storm had cleared so we headed out to the field. We were working on dumping the water out of the blinds when the first flock approached so we all jumped in our blinds and got nice and wet. Throughout the morning we had about five different groups land in the field but the closest was about 100 yds off the decoys--they weren't even landing with the live ones in the field. No shots fired in the morning but it was fun to watch all the ducks work and to see some geese.

Sunday evening we moved to a slough. Two guys on mud flats on one end and two guys with Big Foot floaters on the other. We didn't see a lot of geese but the singles and doubles that came by couldn't resist the dekes or my brother's calling. Total take for the day was 7 geese.

Monday morning was back to the water with the same setup. Mosquitoes were the worst I have ever seen them. Plenty of ducks to watch again. A flock worked and 4 broke off for a close look at the floaters. I was able to drop three but it wasn't a true triple. My brother was able to pull in a couple singles and the guys on the other end had one come in while they were out of position. One guy got three shots off but didn't connect. The goose made a wide circle and came right back to their calling and they made good on their second chance. The wind came up pretty good about 8:30 and that made it impossible for the birds to work. We picked up about 9 and started the difficult row against the wind. Fortunately one of the oar locks broke so there was nothing we could do except drift with the wind to our buddies on the other end of the slough who gave us a ride back to the truck. Total for the weekend was 13 geese.