well I figured id throw this out here now, give a little something for people to think about midway through the drought of the hunting seasons! ill apologize now for the poor video work and sometimes fuzzy pics. we will see if I can even get them to load! anyhow here it is...
so I have become an avid waterfowl hunter over the last 7-8 years. when I first started out, I just wanted to shoot just to shoot. the old saying ' if it flies it dies' was my motto. we had some very successful years in the beginning and killed quite a few birds. as the years have gone on though, I have realized that I don't have to kill it because I can. I enjoy shooting ducks, don't get me wrong, and the occasional goose if the circumstances played out. im at the point where I would rather shoot quality than quantity, and have become more selective about pulling the trigger. I have a hit list that I have been working on the last 3-4 years. Ive been trying to shoot every species of waterfowl that Washington has to offer, and have been attempting to shoot birds worthy of mounts. this has also led me to have a desire to shoot a grand slam of sorts, every waterfowl species that I can shoot in the states, collectively. this is sometimes a tough chore due to them being wild(I know right) and that sometimes 3 shots are required to bring the flying tanks down. with ducks, I am confident that I can find them all on my own here, and I have to means to do it. geese on the other hand, I am not set up for it by any means. I also spend a fair amount of time researching bird species and their habits, habitats, geographic location, what they look like. during this research I found what is known as a blue goose, also known as a color phase snow goose. since I laid eyes on the pictures, I haven't been able to get the idea out of my head that I would like to target this specific bird and have a go at it. this desire led to booking a hunt the central flyway in Missouri during the spring migration. Washington does have a snow goose population, about 90k birds, but nothing like the Midwest does. there were over 1 million birds in the valley we hunted in! it was an experience that I will never forget and something that I would encourage any waterfowler to be a part of at least once in their life.
our trip was scheduled for the end of feb, first part of march. we were to fly into Kansas city and travel an hour north for three days of hunting. well as nature would have it, there was a cold front moving in, pushing all the birds back south for a layover. the guides were in constant communication with us, telling us day by day what was going on. they came to the decision that we would either have to move south for the hunt, 7 1/2 hours away, or they would cancel completely and have to rebook for a different time. our group was more than willing to be mobile, knowing that this particular guide has a great reputation, and would be very tough to rebook. so we opted to travel. this cut our hunting back a day, due to extra travel and the cost of changing our flights, but was well worth it. the original area we were supposed to hunt had about 30k birds around the refuge, being from Washington I thought that was a lot. the new area was pushing upwards of a million birds! ive never thought I would see such a thing or know that I would be a part of it but man was I looking forward to it! we flew in to kc, drove the 7 1/2 hrs to the new area, got three hours of sleep and went straight to the field. not knowing what to expect, I look back now and it was almost overwhelming! we shot close to 200 birds the first day between six of us. it was awesome! no plug requirement and no limit on birds. there were so many birds at once, it was hard to pick where to start! and hunting out of a layout blind, ive never done that before, the birds literally rained down on us! one of the guys even got hit! anyhow, enough talk, here are a few pics and hopefully I can get one or two of the short clip vids to load. enjoy
