Wind blown honker hunting
Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 7:29 pmWind played a huge factor for hunting on the East side this weekend! Friday scouting found us two corn fields with good hunt-able numbers of geese, one of our fields and one of a land owner that we secured permission on for Saturday. The weather was cloudy and calm on Friday. The plan for Saturday's hunt was to use the elevated dirt road edge of the field that had collected some tumble weeds for cover to hide the layout blinds. Saturday morning we were faced with a dilemma, the wind was right in our faces and the geese would be forced to glide over the roadway and our blinds on their final approach, which is never a good option and rarely works. Knowing that geese will always land into the wind we had to make a decision, do we leave the only cover we have in order to get the wind right or is it more important for a good hide? It became apparent both were not going to be possible this morning. We opted to hunt the road edge and put our decoys a little further out to give the geese more room for a landing zone. Well the first few flocks proved our fears correct, the geese came to the field, circled several times trying to get the wind right and finally bugged out, we pushed the dekes out a little further, to the edge of our comfortable shooting range. Finally around 10 o clock the wind died down and a flock of about twenty geese landed and the boys went to work on em. The next couple flocks worked well and we managed to scratch out 7 geese for the day.
Sunday's hunt started out stellar, calm morning after a windy night. around 7:30 am our first group of birds arrived, early for honkers, and they came in on a kite string. After the steel flew our guys knocked down a remarkable six geese in the first volley. Half their limit on the first go! One tough bird managed to regain his composure and lifted off again before we could round him up. Things were looking promising for an easy limit this Sunday morning....but who ever said goose hunting was easy? When the sun started to heat up the hill sides the wind started to beat up our sanity! Huge gusts of wind started blowing our decoys over, blowing the brush off our blinds and blowing sand in every crevasse of our being. We hard assed it there till 12:30 and didn't see another goose fly, figures the geese were the only ones smart enough not to go out in that stuff. From our vantage point we could see huge dust storms tearing across the Quincy/George area! Isn't goose hunting fun!
Sunday's hunt started out stellar, calm morning after a windy night. around 7:30 am our first group of birds arrived, early for honkers, and they came in on a kite string. After the steel flew our guys knocked down a remarkable six geese in the first volley. Half their limit on the first go! One tough bird managed to regain his composure and lifted off again before we could round him up. Things were looking promising for an easy limit this Sunday morning....but who ever said goose hunting was easy? When the sun started to heat up the hill sides the wind started to beat up our sanity! Huge gusts of wind started blowing our decoys over, blowing the brush off our blinds and blowing sand in every crevasse of our being. We hard assed it there till 12:30 and didn't see another goose fly, figures the geese were the only ones smart enough not to go out in that stuff. From our vantage point we could see huge dust storms tearing across the Quincy/George area! Isn't goose hunting fun!
