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Category: Waterfowl
Published: Friday, 31 January 2014 16:51
Written by Greg

Back to the Hot Tub

After a cold, cold day of goose hunting it was back to the hotel for a dip in the steaming hot, hot tub. For the past few years we’ve been heading to Wyoming to hunt Canada geese. This year was no exception.

We arrived in town near the eastern border of Wyoming to find the snow had melted off from most of the nearby fields. This was a nice end-of-January surprise, especially since the ground has been covered in snow for the past two months back home in Utah. After a good night sleep we were up and setting decoys before daylight. We chose a corn field that had 400 – 500 feeding geese in the field the day before. Our decoy spread looked fantastic; a spread that we hoped would provide a lights-out morning shoot.

 

Wad of Canada geese, flock of geese
                                    All morning long geese dumped into our field just out of range

 

Well, the “lights-out morning shoot” didn’t materialize. That is why they call it hunting, not shooting. It turns out that the prior two days of snow-free fields caused the geese to prefer hay over corn. It sure was difficult to sit and watch singles, pairs, small groups and wads of geese drop into the hay portion of the field we were hunting, just 150 yards away.

Canada goose  Wyoming canada goose hunt, bunch of Canada geese

               The little guy retrieving a goose                                     The hunt is heating up

After the morning flight, we knew we had to move. The couple of birds we did bag gave us confidence that our layout blinds were undetectable. It seemed to be that our only problem was the location we chose to set up. Even though we only needed to move east 120 yards, there would be nothing quick about moving the nearly 200 decoys.

 

limits of Canada geese
                                          Limits of Canada geese

 

Just after lunch we were finally concealed in the same field, but right at the point where the corn transitioned to hay. Perfect. It would take a couple of hours before the geese began their afternoon flight, but once it started it was non-stop shooting until we had our limits!

Wyoming goose hunt, limit of Canada geese  wyoming canada goose hunt, several limits of canada geese

            Cold morning of hunting                                     Our limits of Canada geese

After two days of hunting and plenty of hot tubbing, we were headed home with our limits of birds…anxiously looking forward to our next goose hunt!