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.