Goose Hunt at a Loafing Pond

    This past Tuesday, conditions looked good for a hunt at one of the loafing ponds we have permission on in Orange County. Hunting these ponds can really be hit or miss because of the corn in the area that gets cut at various times throughout the season, greatly affecting the patterns of the birds, but we have figured it out to where we can put the odds in our favor. On a cloudy day, we have almost never seen geese use these ponds. However, if it is clear and sunny, the heavens open up and geese rain down from every direction.
    We set up before daylight, an unusual thing for us to do, since the flights are usually 10-11 o'clock, and nothing before or after that. Birds had been coming early in the week prior, so we went for it. We only used 8 or 10 decoys, because the pond is only 50 yards across at it's widest point, making the entire pond pretty much in gun range. We don't have much cover, but there is a little bit of marsh grass growing next to the bank that we can hide in and around, which usually works for us. There were 4 of us hunting, my dad, my little brother Wyatt, my friend Kevin, and myself, meaning we could take 12 birds.
    About half an hour after legal shooting time, we spotted 6 geese approaching from a long ways off, wings locked, not making a sound. I called a little bit at them, but it didn't look like they needed much, since they were looking very committed. The birds decided that they would continue past the pond and out of the area, not good... 20 minutes later, we heard LOUD geese behind us. A pair of geese that had sounded like a dozen or more cleared the trees and coasted right in, we put them both on the water stone dead. After that, the action slowed, and we didn't see anything for the next hour or so, but finally another flock was headed our way, this time it was 5 birds. While the birds were coming in, I told my brother and my friend that I would shoot the 2 birds on the right and leave the other 3 for them to take care of (my dad wasn't shooting since he was taking pictures from 20 yards behind us on the edge of the woods). I brought my two birds down and looked to my left only to see the 3 birds flying away missing only a few feathers, even though 6 shots had been fired. Luckily they circled back over and we brought one straight down, the other two coasted away into a field, and we did recover them both.
     While we were picking up those birds, about 20 geese came over. We lied down on the ground and hed still, but they knew something was up, and checked out. We set back up, and had a pair fly over and circle many times, but they didn't come within gun range, and checked out like the last flock. We had a nice group of birds, probably a dozen or so, come right to us and drop straight down into the decoys backpedaling like mallards dropping into flooded timber. They didn't even circle before coming in. We put four of those on the water (someone's gun jammed, and I straight up missed 2 out of my 3 shots), and had another flock bust us when we were trying to pick up the dead birds. With one goose left until we limited out, we decided to pack up and get out of there so we didn't educate the rest of the birds. We had a very good hunt, although our shooting was definitely not up to par. I shoot a 20 gauge, so I can use that as a halfway decent excuse of why I am not bringing the birds down, but ultimately what it comes down to is that I need to step it up when birds are in the decoys! Thanks for reading!

 Most of the birds we shoot are lessers, but we did shoot 2 "big 'ol residents"

All Good Things Must Come To An End

   To my dismay, I recently lost the permission to use firearms on what have been my "stomping grounds" ever since I took my first deer 8 years ago... I have grown up hunting on a few properties that border one another (including mine), they aren't very big, all 5-20 acre pieces of land, but altogether add up to around 100 acres. After the arrival of new neighbors from Boston two years ago, all of these properties have slowly been degraded to "archery only" areas. This isn't because I have been putting anyone in danger, it is simply because these new neighbors don't the slightest idea about guns in general, and voice their opinions to my other neighbors that let me hunt, and eventually have managed to get their way.
    Don't get me wrong, I love to bow hunt, but I can't exactly hunt geese, rabbits, squirrels, or anything that isn't normally hunted with archery equipment without things getting really expensive really quickly, not to mention the fact that it is 10 times harder to do it with a bow. And trying to hunt deer in rifle season is not like hunting them in bow season, this time of year the deer spook from the slightest things, and aren't forgiving at all. We used to have a really fun deer drive that my two younger brothers and I would do in the evenings, where two of us would push a whole bunch of deer by the other brother, and after one or two were down, we would work together to field dress and get them back to the house. That is definitely one of many traditions we had that will no longer be possible because of the archery only policy. So even though there is the "why can't you just do it with a bow?" point of view, many things will never be the same because of this.
    I wish I could sit down to talk with my neighbors and explain to them that they don't need to be afraid to be in the woods, but that simply won't happen, we have talked to them many times to try to explain what we do, and they honestly don't have a clue. It sure is sad to watch everything wither away like this, because even though it's "only guns" being revoked now, it started out as "just high-powered rifles", so who knows how long I will actually be able to hunt here. But I'm trying to forget about it, I will have my driver's license by next season, so hopefully I can hunt some other places and not worry about this mess. I have been hunting for 8 years here, and have made countless memories with family and friends, or even just by myself, that continue to stick in my mind like they happened yesterday, but all of a sudden, even though I'm still here, the land is still here, and the game is still here, the opportunity is not.