Starting a New Season
The start of the 2020 hunting season is right around the corner. Everyone is getting ready to get out of the house and back to the outdoors to do their favorite fall hunts. There are a couple hunts that are coming up that I am very excited about this season. The first hunt I am going on this year is one that has been due for the last few years. I go out to North Dakota for the early Canada goose season. I love starting the hunting season off by going after some big honkers. Especially when I get to bring my son with me to see one of his Grandpas. To have all three of us hunting together is extra special.
The North Dakota early Canada goose season starts in the middle of August and it runs to the middle of September. This is one of my favorite hunts to do every year. I start to get the itch at the end of July while waiting for the season to start. One of the things that I love about this season is that the daily and position limits are very liberal. We can harvest 15 geese per person per day, with a position limit of 45 geese. So you can stack 'em up if you do it right. Which this time of year the geese are flying low and slow. With this year's geese not being educated on decoy spreads and blinds, this can be very exciting and fun hunting with birds working the decoy spread well and basically, putting themselves at your feet, it is quite a sight to see.
The way we hunt these birds in the early season is that we do a lot of scouting of cut wheat and barley fields. Some fields have swaths, some don't, but we stay off the farm’s crop. We try to figure out where in the field that they are feeding and how the geese are situated. This means if they are in one big flock, or “family groups”, and if they are sitting on a hill or on the back side of the hill. In the early season, more times than not, the geese are in family groups. Normally, they are spread out more and in smaller groups of 3-12 in a flock. So, we try to imitate how the geese are working the field like where they have eaten and where they are going to eat next. These are a couple details that we pay attention to along with wind direction and where the roost is located. We do not put out a big spread, but more of a smaller spread and family group style like I mentioned above. Also, we are hunting local birds that were born and raised in the area. Depending on where you're hunting, you might not be hunting large numbers of birds, so keep it small and simple for the early season. When we start to see the geese flocking up into big flocks, we start to add decoys to the spread and put them all together in one big flock. With that said, bigger flocks of geese are harder to hunt and getting them to decoy well is more difficult. There are lots of eyes in a bigger flock and they are usually well educated from being hunted and shot at later in the season. So, details are a big factor in middle to late season birds.
Another reason why I love this early goose season is that I get to take my son out with me, and he gets to enjoy what we love. When I say we, I mean the person who took me hunting and has taught me a lot of what I know about hunting, my old man. To be hunting with my son and my old man is an awesome experience. Three generations of hunters enjoying what we live for and passing down traditions. It is one heck of a feeling. Plus, if you throw a couple good friends into the mix, it becomes life-long memories that you never forget.
-Andy Meeks, Fall Obsession Pro Staff