I was actually up even earlier than planned this morning. Our daughter was awake at 03:10, so I got up and got ready for the morning’s hunt. It’s not a sleeper-inner’s kind of activity. We were in the field early enough to enjoy the clear sky of bright stars, got set up in the -4C cold, and enjoyed some coffee. The birds came in, as anticipated at the break of dawn. After an hour and half of action, we had 41 Canada Geese, 7 White Fronted geese, and 9 ducks [7 mallards, 2 Pintails].
I’m really spoiled to get invited into these hunts. There are folks who pay a lot of money to be guided to do this. It’s a lot of pre-shoot leg work. The most complicated part, in my opinion, is that far beforehand you need to know what crops are planted [the feed dictating the bird feeding behavior], who owns the land they’re feeding on, and then secure permission to hunt on the land. Other hunters may want access to the same field, the birds may move from one location to another – there are a lot of variables that can screw up a hunt.
My uncle was a bit late meeting me to butcher birds tonight – he’d found another bunch of geese and ducks and had already obtained permission from the owner to be on the land. This hunt’s even closer than the last, and is in a really pretty swathed barley field with rolling hills. I’m on spotting duty tomorrow morning to make sure they’re still in there – and if they are – it looks like Saturday morning will be my second, and likely last, hunt of this kind this season.
