- Details
- Category: Waterfowl
- Published: Friday, 28 March 2014 15:37
- Written by Greg
Salt and Pepper Sky
Peeking through my layout blind, the salt and pepper dotted sky filled with snow geese was exactly why we had driven the 18 hours to our destination. Spring had arrived here on the eastern side of South Dakota and the sight of the migrating snow geese was spectacular. Never in my life had I seen so many birds in the sky at one time and now looking back I wished I had busted out the camera to capture some of the moments that are now only etched in my mind.
My son Dallas was out of school for spring break, but instead of heading for a warm sunny destination he instead chose to head for the Great Plains of South Dakota to chase geese. Luckily for me the timing was perfect and I was able to tag along. About half way to our destination on the eastern side of Wyoming we stopped to pick up Jordan, a friend that we often hunt with for Canada geese. From that point on the ride seemed to fly by as we talked non-stop the entire way, zipping right through Sturgis and across the barren rolling plains until we arrived in the small town of Clark. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the Lookout Bar & Grill and headed for the lodge where we’d stay for the next 2 days.
The first morning was frosty cold, but at least we were hunting a snow free field since the previous day had been just warm enough to have melted all the remaining snow. However, back at the lodge the guys were still ice fishing for walleye through 30 inches of ice, so we hoped we weren’t too far on the northern front of the migration. As it turned out, the migrators had arrived as evidenced by what seemed to be endless waves of snow, blue and Ross’s geese. All day long we had snows passing directly over us, but mostly just out of shotgun range. Their close proximity kept us on pins and needles all day long. Ask any snow goose hunter and they will tell you that getting adult snows to decoy can be quite a challenge and that is what we were facing, adult birds. Between the three of us we ended up with a total of 17 geese on the day, not too bad.
Day two started out to be quite a bit more productive than the previous morning, but by afternoon the number of decoying birds slowed down. Luckily I had the presence of mind during day two to poke my camera out of the layout blind to get a few pics. But with the looming thought of the long drive ahead, we decided to call it a day a few hours before legal shooting ended and finished the day with a total of 23 geese.
Blues and Snows flying over head Snows craning their necks to check us out
As it turned out, the “juvies” began to arrive a few days after we left and Waterfowl Junkie Outdoors had a couple of consecutive 100+ bird days. You can bet we will be booking another hunt with them again next year...and just maybe we’ll be lucky enough to experience one of those 100+ bird days!