Limits for a First Timer

by Mike Bard
Zink Calls Pro-Staff
14 December 2009

For years I have been hunting with my buddy, Mike Dieck, around his home in Long Island for brant and black ducks and he has come up in the past to hunt wood ducks. Well earlier this year his son Jared was old enough to get out and start waterfowling and he was interested in coming up to hunt geese in a field, as that is just something they don't have many opportunities to do in his area.

Well late October finally came and our regular goose season began. A week later, Mike and Jared came up for their hunt and we had a nice corn field with lots of cover and geese scouted out. Not only did the field have a good number of birds in it, but the area was loaded, so we planned to set a large spread to get some traffic birds as well. Mike, Jared, the regular crew and I headed out to set up 200 fully flocked lesser and honker decoys. As we were finishing up our spread, another group of hunters showed up, saw us and decided to hunt right across the street, so I was glad he put out such a large spread.

The hunt started off slow due to a steady rain keeping the geese on the roost, but it didn't take long for a couple to come in and Jared to down his first goose. Once the rain let up, the geese really turned it on and the skies filled with groups of geese moving everywhere. We used several flags and aggressive calling with our Zink® Money Makers along with our large spread, which allowed us to work flock after flock, only shooting into the smaller groups and letting the larger ones escape not knowing we were there. Given the number of geese moving around and the other group of hunters in the next field, we used aggressive techniques to get the geese in close and get our limits quickly.

Not only was Jared able to get his first goose today, but his first NY goose limit (3 geese), which he accomplished with some excellent shooting.

After day one's hunt, we knew we had got out of the field soon enough for birds to get in there and feed, but we chose to scout the area for a potentially better option for day two's hunt. After splitting up and scouring the area, we found several soy bean fields holding geese, but with 6-7 hunters, we knew that hiding wouldn't be possible, so we decided to head back to the same corn field for day two's hunt.

Again we decided to deploy a large spread for those same reasons as the previous day; however we did make some large changes in how the decoys were laid out and used a different part of the field. Similar to the previous day, the same group of other hunters showed up as we were finishing our set up and decided to hunt the field next to us, actually moving closer to us than the previous day. Not ideal conditions... hunting the same field consecutive days and additional hunting pressure, we again decided it best to be aggressive with the geese, which proved to work and we limited out quickly.

Again on this hunt, Jared showed us his impressive shooting skills, making one particular shot on a single going away that still stands out in my mind. It was a great weekend. Mike and Jared left for their long drive home earlier than they expected with their possession limit of geese and a great father-son experience.