NoDak Early Goose Season - Day 1

"Hero Shot" from Morning Hunt - Myself, Kyle (Rick Hahne Calls), Tyler (Tribal Outdoors), Josh (Rick Hahne Calls). Picture by Team DrakeTaker Pro-staffer Jason Tarwater

Lockin' Up the Trailer

Myself, Pro-staffer Jason Tarwater, two pro-staffers from Rick Hahne Calls (Josh and Kyle) and Tyler from Tribal Outdoors all decided to head to North Dakota for the Early Canada Goose Season that started on August 15th. The reason they have this season so early is because the resident geese up there are eating rows and rows of crops around their roosting areas. After seeing the damage first hand I truly realize how much of a problem it really was. We made the 10 hour drive up there and stopped by the Dakota Decoy Shop on the way thru to meet Bill and Dinger and the boys. We scouted all day long Friday to find the perfect field. We found a fresh cut Barley field just North of the town we were staying in that we decided would be the field for day 1. We got up at 3AM and headed to the field only to see another truck and trailer already in the field, no worries as we had a"Plan B" field and headed to it. Our "Plan B" field was a chiseled corn field that the geese were using, the only problem was that it had rained overnight and we couldn't pull out into the field with the trailer and we only had 6 decoy bags so we carried 3 dozen out in bags and then another dozen by hand and our blinds and got all setup and ready to hunt. The birds didn't work like we wanted them to, mainly because of so many "live geese" sitting around us on water. We did have a bunch of ducks working our spread and landing in the decoys to keep us entertained. We ended up shooting 13 that morning before packing up around 9:30.

Myself, Josh, Kyle and Tyler - Picture by Jason Tarwater

Dakota Decoy X-treme Honkers

Myself, Kyle and Tyler with our Eyes to the Sky

That afternoon we headed up to the "Plan A" cut barley field that we were beat to that morning. When we pulled into the field it was about 85 degrees out and then a huge storm rolled in and poured on us for about 30 minutes and the temperature dropped about 15 degrees and as soon as the rain was over the temp went up into the 90's. It was some of the wackiest weather I've hunted in. We only needed 12 geese to fill our 5-man daily limit of 25. We shot a single as he flew over the spread and so now we just needed 11. Jason spotted a flock to the South about 2 miles away and Josh and I started flagging and the flocked turned. As they got closer we started calling and they were acting like they wanted in, but as they got to about 40 yards they were still too high and it seemed like they were gonna go right past us. All of a sudden they just started dropping straight down and into the decoys. As the flock of about 40 was dropping into the decoys we raised up out of the blinds and started shooting. Birds were falling everywhere and as Josh nailed one trying to get out the side of the spread, I started yelling for us to get a count before anyone shot anymore geese. Good thing I did to, b/c we dropped exactly 11 geese out of the flock and gave us our 25 bird daily limit. Watching that flock of 40 drop straight down on top of us was an amazing site to see.

NoDak Early Goose Season - Day 2

Kyle (Rick Hahne Calls), Josh (Rick Hahne Calls), Myself, Jason (Team DrakeTakers)

Myself, Josh (Rick Hahne Calls), Kyle (Rick Hahne Calls), Tyler (Tribal Outdoors) Picture by Team DT Pro-Staffer Jason Tarwater

The DrakeTaker

Pro-Staffer Jason Tarwater

Now You See Us!

Now You Don't!!!

On day 2 we hunted in the morning on a cut wheat field we had scouted two days before and had geese in it, the night before it didn't have any geese in it, but we figured since we got to scouting so late and the amount of birds around us that we would be ok. We got setup and we could hear tons of birds to the North of us on a huge watershed. The wind was howling out of the North around 35-40MPH and we figured the birds would get up and not wanting to fight the wind would just sail right to our field to the South, well they didn't and we ended up with just 2 birds for the morning. We did have a ton of ducks working our spread and landing in the decoys all morning long so we weren't bored my any means and I now have a new favorite quote from the fields thanks to Josh, "Just eat the pop-tarts already!" You had to be there to understand it. Anyways after picking up for the morning we spotted the field that all the geese were going to and got permission to hunt it. Now in North Dakota if a field isn't posted you don't have to get permission to hunt it, but we still felt like doing things the right way and getting permission. That afternoon we got out to the barley field that was cut and put into windrows. We set out 6 dozen X-treme Honkers and put the blinds in the windrows and got ready to hunt. The birds were wanting into our field, but our only problem was the wind kept pushing them off to one side of the decoys. We still ending up shooting our 23 to finish off our daily limit in about an hour and a half.

NoDak Early Goose Season - Day 3

Myself, Kyle (Rick Hahne Calls), Josh (Rick Hahne Calls) and Tyler (Tribal Outdoors) Picture by Team DrakeTaker Pro-Staffer Jason Tarwater

On this morning we headed back to the same cut barley field we had hunted the previous evening. With the great success and amount of birds in the area that hadn't even got up off the roosting areas the night before we figured we would have good success. We setup a little bit further back in the field this time, but used pretty much the same decoy and blind setup as the day before. As the sun rose up out of the sky so did the birds and right off the bat we had geese in the decoys folks. This hunt was filled with geese in the decoys, guns going off and a lot of reloading. Within an hour we had our 25 geese for the day and a lot of great memories to go with them.

Dakota Decoys in NoDak

A couple good pics of the spread in the cut and windrowed barley field.

Turned the Sleeper head around and created a "Calling Goose" head

A couple pics of the new Sleeper Conversion Pack for Dakota Full Bodies and some of the X-treme Canada Goose Floaters


The new X-treme Mallards from Dakota Decoy Co.


Picked up our order of 6 dozen Canada Full Bodies, 1 1/2 dozen Canada Floaters and 3 dozen X-treme Mallards

Field Staffer Kyle Steele's Turkey

My favorite pic of this year

First Hunt of the New Year

On this hunt we hooked up with my good buddy Jeff Neal and Ed Dewey. Urban and I had a good field scouted out with about 200 Canada's in it. We met Jeff and Ed there about 2PM and set-up the spread of about 6-7 dozen decoys which consisted of GHG FFD Lessers, Hardcore Lessers, and Dakota Brand decoys. We weren't setup very long when the first flock was headed our way. The first flocked worked us and then landed about 45 yards to the West of us. Well after popping up and dropping 3 of them, we decided to move the spread around to prevent other flocks from landing on the outside of the spread. Well it turned out it worked as the next flock came right in to the killzone and we dropped 5 out of the that flock. The last flock we decoyed was a flock of 6 and we dropped 4 out that flock to get our limit. This was a fun, fast hunt full of action. This was also Ed's first real goose hunt and he has the fever now.

X-Mas Eve Slaughter

This day was a weird one. The afternoon after Austin and myself limited out and got the band we scouted a field right behind my house that was full of geese. So we called some buddies and had 6 people lined up to go out in the morning. Well we got setup that morning and the snow we were supposed to get never showed up and neither did the geese. We did end up shooting 2 Snow geese that came by our spread, but that was it for the morning hunt. Well fellow DrakeTakers Pro-Staffer Austin Urban and Field-Staffer Jordan Lowe were the only 2 guys able to go out that afternoon with me. We setup with about 6 dozen decoys that consisted of GHG's, Hardcores, BigFoots and Dakota and about 2 dozen GHG Mallard FB's. We had shot 7 Canada's and were watching Snow Geese pour into the field next to us. Every flock of Canada's and Mallards that flew over us after the Snows landed went straight to the other field. I knew eventually the Snows would walk and field-hop their way into our spread and sure enough they did. After we let about half of the flock of 3500 walk past us looking for neck collars we decide to raise up out of the blinds and shoot it up. We ended up dropping 17 Snows. We totalled out with 17 snows and 8 Canada's that day. This was all in about 2 hours of hunting. It was a blast.

Shootin' a Limit and Getting Some Silver

This was another fun hunt with my good buddy Austin. Austin had a field right next to his house that I scouted b/c he was sleeping or something...lol....neways we got out there early that morning and got setup with our spread of GHG, Dakota, and Hardcore Goose decoys. We ended up going out by ourselves b/c nobody else was able to go that morning and one guy decided to sleep in....he missed out!! We got set-up by sun rise and within 30 minutes the first flock of Canada's was headed right toward our corn field. As soon as they saw our spread they locked up and came in committed. 6 Geese dropped down about 15 yards out in front of us and I gave the command to "DrakeTake Em'!" and 4 geese dropped. The next hour was hard, b/c all we had was big flocks of about 10-15 coming by us and we didn't want to shoot at a flock that big just for 2 geese, so we waited and waited and finally a "Pair of Singles" as I call them came over the trees from the North and locked up and dropped down and they decoyed to about 5 yards when we rose up and knocked them down. As we were high-fiving and talking about picking up dekes, we heard Snow Geese and looked towards the West and they were headed our way and they were low, so we hopped back in the blinds just to try and wait them out to see what they did. Well it turned out to be worth the wait as they decided to land about 25 yards from us and proceeded to walk into our decoys, since it was cold out we didn't wait around to look for collars we just decided to do some conservation, we ended up shooting 7 with our 6 shots. As I went to get the truck and trailer and proceeded to get stuck, my buddy was picking up decoys he picked up some of the Snows also and found one with a leg band on it.

Hunting Solo

Decided to go hunt one morning by myself right across the road from my house in one my fields. I only setup about 20 decoys that consisted of Dakota, GHG, and BigFoots. I was setup in a a chiseled corn field and actually got the blind to blend it pretty good. The morning started off on a great note as a "pair of singles" came off the river and saw my spread and the flag and decided to come visit. After I dropped those two the next 5 or 6 flocks were all big flocks of 12 or more and so I didn't flag or call at them, b/c there was no point in making one more flock of late-season birds decoy wise for just one bird. All I saw were big flocks the rest of the morning so I headed out of the field around 9AM.

Opening Day 2008

After spending the last 32 hours in and out of the hospital with my g/f and having her deliver her baby at 2AM on Saturday morning, I was loading up the trailer at 5AM and headed to the spot to meet my buddies. I had scouted this pond for the last week and it was full of geese and had a few ducks mixed in as well. We had to set-up on the side of the pond that the corn stubble was about 20 yards back from the pond due to the wind being out of the wrong direction. After the morning started off slow about 8:30AM the geese started getting off the the pond at Payless ShoeSource and headed our way. The next hour was filled with alot of calling, flagging, shooting and reloading. When it was all said and done we had 13 Canada's and 3 Mallard Drakes. We ended up 2 geese shy of our 5-man limit, but we wanted to get out of the field and save it for later in the week.