Some day I will sleep until the alarm goes off....

Carl

Carl

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But not today. Got up at 230, was at the ramp by 3:45. Amazingly there was two boat pulling away from the dock and at least 4 other trailers there already
Water is way up from the storm yesterday. The spot I?m on should have a foot, there is almost 3?.
My background. USS Alabama. Heard some gaddies quacking in the dark.


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Heard a goose call so I called back and a pair buzzed my lone goose decoy 5 minutes after shooting time started
After 38 years of hunting my first Canada goose!!



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And and a greater scaup. Dropped two that seemed stone dead. got the boat out of the blind and looked up and one was gone!! Never found it.
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Chris Finch said:
Soon I?ll be in a state with Sunday hunting.

Keep up the good work! Sleep is for the dead, haha
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I left home at 3:45 yesterday- drove 2 hours to the ramp- hunted for 3.5 hours, drove back... Didn't sleep all night listening to the wind whistle and a low temp of 5 degrees... Passed up a bunch of buffies. Had four blacks parachute in and didn't see them as I was lighting a cigar. This no sunday hunting sucks....
 
John Kirk said:
Chris Finch said:
Soon I?ll be in a state with Sunday hunting.

Keep up the good work! Sleep is for the dead, haha
Click to expand...

I left home at 3:45 yesterday- drove 2 hours to the ramp- hunted for 3.5 hours, drove back... Didn't sleep all night listening to the wind whistle and a low temp of 5 degrees... Passed up a bunch of buffies. Had four blacks parachute in and didn't see them as I was lighting a cigar. This no sunday hunting sucks....
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Why are you driving so far? Plenty of ducks close to your new home. Speaking of which--Saturday--can I show you one? You still have the Black Brant?
 
Jeff Reardon said:
John Kirk said:
Chris Finch said:
Soon I?ll be in a state with Sunday hunting.

Keep up the good work! Sleep is for the dead, haha
Click to expand...

I left home at 3:45 yesterday- drove 2 hours to the ramp- hunted for 3.5 hours, drove back... Didn't sleep all night listening to the wind whistle and a low temp of 5 degrees... Passed up a bunch of buffies. Had four blacks parachute in and didn't see them as I was lighting a cigar. This no sunday hunting sucks....
Click to expand...

Why are you driving so far? Plenty of ducks close to your new home. Speaking of which--Saturday--can I show you one? You still have the Black Brant?
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The boat is in Winterport still; I was planning one more hunt in Stockton this Saturday and then hunting down here for the rest of the year. Yes, I have Brant decoys..... And I love to hunt brant. Let's talk Wednesday- Huntress and I will be at the meeting.
 
Ended the day with the 4 birds. Saw a pile of gadwalls and scared a Few.
but none would decoy and very few would come close enough for a shot. About 9am the north wind really picked up and the water really started dropping. So I packed up. Back at the dock I ran into a number of guys who had the same story on gadwalls. Everyone commented how crowded it was today, almost seemed like opening day.
 
Congrats on the goose. I forget that areas across the country are different than mine sometimes. Canada geese everywhere here, just like swan. Thousands of swan are around and I tend to forget that a lot of hunters are lucky to see a few in their lifetime in other parts.
 
Can?t say I have ever seen a swan in the wild so you have me there!
It is interesting how different things are across the country.
We have more resident Canada geese now but they rarely stray into hunting areas.
We also rarely see mallards, might shoot a pintail every 4 or 5 years.
 
Nice job on the Honker! Love seeing what others shoot as the flyways are so different. Even the flyway in the pacific has different areas that hold different types of birds where I'm located.
Thanks for sharing
 
Congratulations on your first Goose! I am still waiting on my first US goose :) Looks like a really nice day to have been on the water.
 
Thanks Bill. We dont get many chances on them here, the spot i was in is about the only public waters I know of that they frequent. Most the resident Canadas are on golf course, parks, etc.. So it really is a bonus bird for sure!
 
It was pretty damp and chilly, for us Gulf coast folks!

I've shot snows and a whitefront out in TX before but this was my first Canada!
 
This was one big bird, I'm guessing around 15 pounds. These are big tough birds. My first shot seems to have centered the body and broke one wing. But the #3 pellets that hit the body never made it into the muscle, they were all lodged just under the 1/2" layer of dense fat. Only bruised the muscles underneath. The second shot put pellets in the head and neck and it was dead when it hit the water.
The blue phase snow I killed 3 years ago was half the size of the Canada!



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Over half the geese shot in Michigan are the giant Canada subspecies now, most in the southern peninsula counties where they are quite abundant. We don't begin to see Mississippi Valley flock birds until around mid-September, two weeks after our opener. Non-mating adult giants that "summer" on the Ontario side of Lake Superior begin to show-up about a week before the opener in early September. We see them going north in late June. Our giant Canada relocations were from remnant flocks discovered in Illinois and Rochester, Mn.
 
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