My buddy Billy shot me a text stating that he wanted to make
a trip to Northeast Arkansas almost two weeks earlier than I really like to go.
I usually like to go down there somewhere around the week of or just right
after Valentines day. I have been making
at least one trip to Arkansas to chase snows since 1999 and in the last 13
years I have learned that the peak
migration is somewhere around
this week in mid February.
The last few weeks of
January back here in Southern Illinois we were seeing major migration of snows.
We had enough snows around , and our duck season was so poor , we had been chasing after white geese for
the last two weeks. We are seeing so many geese here I started
making phone calls to check on the status of the geese in Arkansas. The fist
week of February all of the reports were the same , GET HERE NOW ! There was
only one problem with that , Arkansas late youth season. Regardless
we make plans to head off to the land of rice fields and hopefully snow
geese.
As February 9 th gets closer and closer my goose reports
change daily. Some are coming back good others bad. Most are telling me geese
are here one day gone the next. With the sunny days with temps. In the high 50’s
and a stiff south wind I don’t wonder why ,The geese are on their way back
home. Ready or not here we come !
Now that plans are set in stone finally the day rolls
around ! My brother Josh and a friend
Jeff and I meet at my house to load our gear into Josh’s truck and head off for
4 days of goose killin. After a little more work and several cuss words we
got the 50 dozen Sill socks ,layout
blinds , and other gear into the truck and we are on the way 2 hours later than
we wanted. The plan was to put in some miles do some scouting for the morning and just maybe kill a goose
or two today. My friend Billy and 3 other guys will meet us in Jonesboro
sometime that evening .
With 3 hours and a few hundred miles behind us we are in goose country looking for a good
concentration of light geese for us to
hunt over the next several days. We had seen several groups when in Illinois but
only one small flock since we hit the Arkansas state line. I was not saying it
but was worried that we should have went north instead of south. Any snow goose
hunter knows to consistently kill snows and blues you have to go where they are
period. There are several documented cases of geese getting up one day in South
Texas and two days latter be in Saskatchewan . I was starting to seriously
doubt this whole trip when we saw a
large group of geese in the air.
We start seeing more and more flocks of geese in the air so
we start to follow them to where ever it is they are wanting to feed today. A
short ride later finds us looking at
several fields that are holding SEVERAL
thousand snow blue and speckle belly geese .
After we knock on a few doors we have a name and a phone
number of the farmer that owns the field .His workers tell us that since we are hunting “them white geese” that
he wouldn’t care if we hunted ,but call him in case he leased it out, just
leave the deer alone.
We drive down the
road a few miles to check on some old hunting areas that always hold geese and
have been good to us in the past and we find just what we wanted , even more
geese . We re secure permission to hunt a farm that we have hunted in the past
. Even though we have permission to hunt and know where some geese are I want
to have a back up plan for our back up plan.
It is always best to be on the X when hunting snows but my plan for
tomorrow was to set up our spread in between the two large flocks of geese and catch them going back and fourth .
Just about an hour
before dark while on the way back to town we stopped to watch a field of geese
fill up for the evening. They seemed to be milling closer and closer to a levee
at the other side of the field. Closer inspection reveled the geese were not
only close to the levee , they were on it ! With cover in the form of an abandoned fish pond
converted to rice field we could get close to the unsuspecting geese to kill
several. Josh was not for he plan at all. These geese are the ones we are
counting on being in the very near area in the morning and jumping them now may
risk blowing them to another county. The sheer number of geese in the field is
impressive , 20,000 conservatively . Jeff don’t seem to want to jump them up
either. I plead my case to the two of them, but neither are wanting to go , but
I do.
After all my pleading the others don’t want to sneak on
these geese so I’m gonna go after them alone.
I grab my SX2 and a shell belt and I’m off down the deep ditch. A quick
assessment finds that if I crossed over the levee to my right I could almost
run along the rice field and get on these birds fast and unseen .
I quickly make my way to the end of the first compartment in
the old fish ponds and I’m still a good 100 yards from a major concentration of
geese . So I slowly and carefully belly crawl up the side of the levee and down
the other. I take a quick look and could shoot now and kill birds ,but I want
to see how many I can get. With the geese feeding comfortably ,and the fact
that I’m alone I press on to a area of
the field that has more birds. I push on with my goal a dark bush that I can
easily see without looking up to much.
I arrive at my spot and
get into position for my shot. I slowly make my way to the top of the
levee and there are geese less than 20 yards away and unaware of my presence .
If you have never heard he sound 20,000 plus snow geese feeding I cant explain
it to you ,if you do it’s a sound you don’t soon forget. The low roar combined
with the squawks and “honks” is unreal. I get up on my knees with my upper
body still very close to the ground so I
can get a good head rake with the first shot and then raise to shoot at the
ones leaving when it happened, I was
busted. I immediately point my gun at the leaving hoard and emptied it into the leaving flock.
Geese fall dead onto the ground and several fall out of the
flock as the leave.I take off after the ones that are up and running ,looking
back hoping that Josh and Jeff are coming to help but they are by the truck
JUST WATTCHING ! ! I chased4 or 5 waaaaayyyyyyyyy across the field only to see
there are others getting away. After it was all said and done I had 17 geese in
the back of the truck. I have now shed blood ,now I can relax and enjoy myself
!
0430 the next morning came all to early but the rest of our
crew was there and we were off . Billy brought 3 guys with him. I had hunted
with 2 of them Camren and Jimmy and then a friend of his ,Mike. The forecast
was for less than snow goose whether. Clouds , rain , wind and cold .
We arrived at the field I had picked to hunt and started
setting decoys. The down wind side was a bare rolled mud field and the one we
were actually in was tall rice stubble. We formulated a plan to make a “Y”
shaped spread with the open mouth pointed down wind. The cold wet wind at our
backs as we set up made it plain miserable . The shape of the decoy spread
slowly formed and then fell apart as 7 guys all “thought” they knew the plan.
,but anyway at the end of it all we had 50 dozen Sillosocks and 15 dozen SoftShell decoys that Jimmy had got
a real good deal on.
The first few flocks of the day did exactly what I thought
they would do , look at us ,get 50
yards down wind and slide off to the
right side of the spread. In my experience snow geese, especially small flocks
, will NOT fly over decoys.
After several flocks doing the same thing it was
obvious they didn’t like the spread not “just
being snows” We made some adjustments to the spread and they seemed to work in
a little closer but not fully committed.
We had one or two down when around 0900 the other guys
couldn’t sit anymore. They went out to find an easy jump shoot while we stayed
put. Although we saw several thousand geese flying around that morning a few things were against us . The main thing
was the weather. The other was we were just not where they wanted to be.
Around noon we picked up the spread and went our separate
ways to scout and formulate a game plan for the next day. We ended up finding
several more geese and one easy sneak where I killed 25 while the other guys
looked on. The other group ended up with 20 in a jump.
The next morning brought more favorable weather for snows it
was much colder highs in the 30’s and
20 mph wind with 35 mph gusts. We were
setting up in a field that Billy had gained permission the day before. The plan
was to set only the Sillosocks in a “boomerang” shape and set the blinds in the
middle, slightly to the left.
We could hear geese roosting across the road from us as we
were setting up. As the day gets closer
we work faster . Just as we finish up and Josh and Billy go park the trucks, we
got busted. The geese across from us get
up and head off to where ever they are going as we are finishing up brushing
our blinds. We should have shot at several of them but lay there in awe of 1000’s
of geese climb higher and head off in the distance.
Early on we got a few to decoy on close and had
a few on the ground ,but we were missing some chip shots. With the wind
at a steady 20-25 mph we decided the wind was blowing our shot off its mark she
we adjusted accordingly and gees began to fall
when we shot.
Somewhere around 10 Billy and the others were getting edgy
,they wanted to go jump shoot so they were up and gone leaving Jeff ,Josh and I
to defend the decoys. Not long after we had action again. With or kill pile
growing we were having a good time killing pairs and singles coming to our
decoys ,but they were acting just like snows circle and circle and give an
opportunity that needs to be taken when offered . Several times at the “next
low pass” call the geese would go on to greener pastures. At one point Josh and
I were both out gathering up cripples and got caught hiding by a fuel tank
while a rather large group started to work the spread. We were watching with
anticipation while the tornado formed above our decoys. Then with no way of
knowing what was taking place Jeff sat up and shot a goose that got closer than
he should have.
At one point during the morning I was hungry and needed my
snacks and lunch out of the truck. On my way back to my blind, right behind my
blind in fact I tried my best to hide while the fist tornado of the trip
formed I was helpless laying behind the
blinds with nothing but some chips and PB&J sandwiches ! I moved a decoy or
two to help cover me and grabbed a flag. laying there we had geese from 10 feet off the ground to as far up as
you could see. There were flipping and circling us before we had geese walking
in the decoys I did manage to work my gun out of my blind and not get busted.
Then the shot was called and several geese out of the cloud hit the ground.
After some hooping and hollering we were gathering up geese when another flock
came. And then another. At one point Josh got caught out in the decoys and had
to just watch the show. For a good 5 minutes I could not keep my gun loaded.
Several times the greed was more than I could stand and should have called the
shot sooner than I did but its hard when while yes we do have birds landing in
the decoys but also a mile high and coming in fast.
In an hour we were in
the vortex of 4 tornados of snow geese. It was simply amazing stuff dreams are
made of and what snow goose hunters crave. I did get a minute to text the other
guys and tell them what they were missing. I got a text back that simply said “We
Know”. It seems while they were out and about they saw the cloud of geese in
the sky and followed it straight to our spread. I don’t really know how many
the 3 of us killed ,but I do know if the other guys were there we would have
killed a ton.
Over the next few hours we shot geese. We drew a few smaller
groups and of course the pairs and a few
singles. The number of specks that jus came right in was amazing . At one point
I saw one of the guys in the group that was very sure of his marksmanship
skills raise up and shoot a single snow out of a group of 6 specks ! There were
many times the shot should have been called sooner ,there were many times that
we should have NOT waited for that next pass ,but a good time was had by all.
At the end of the day we had more than 40 (exactly I don’t remember) that we
decoyed in . Not all of them were juvies, actually most of the ones we killed
were adult birds.
The next day brought colder temps but not as much wind. We
had lost 3 members of our group so we had a little more work to do that the
previous days. While we were seeing birds ,and got to watch them get up off the
roost as we did the day before they were not close enough to decoy. Yesterday
afternoon we should have got out and scouted a new field or two. While we had
several in the area we could have hunted we were back in the same one . I personally
don’t like to hunt a field more than 2 days in a row we all thought we could
pull it off.
With our sore bodies from the last three days and a three
hour drive in front of us we decided to call it a day around 10 with only 2
dead geese. We started the almost hour and a half chore of picking up decoys .
When we were all packed up there were no regrets in picking up early. Thus
ended our snow goose season in Arkansas.
We had some good times with old friends and new. We got
schooled a few times , a few more times we should have shot , a time or two we
should have held off from shooting but over all it was a very successful trip. Over a hundred geese killed
in 2 full days and a few ours out of 2 more days was not bad. Yes there have
been many trips were we killed more ,but we accomplished what we came to do ,
decoy some of the wariest waterfowl in North America.
