Tony, Matt, Chewie and I lay in our blinds in a quagmire
watching and waiting for geese to appear. It was cold and windy and ducks flew
around in the early morning gloom. During the week, the boys had scouted about
150 birds using a paddock – they’d walked the birds off the previous evening. Because
we’d have to walk our gear into a wet and slusshy paddock, I’d decided to
travel as light as possible so had the dozen Higdon shells on my back, my
layout, blind bag and gun. We managed to get the gear in without too many
dramas and set the decoys for the cold SE wind. Because of the presence of a
house we couldn’t set exactly for the wind, but none the less it felt like a
pretty good setup overall.
 |
| I detect a goose |
From time to time rain pelted down and we sheltered down.
The sun came up, raising temperatures marginally. Finally a ragged group of 5
geese appeared on the horizon. We got down and began to flag and they came our
way… before passing overhead and landing 2 paddocks over. Uh-oh.
20 minutes later, a huge group of birds got up and began to
fly towards us. At a guess 100+ birds were up and approaching. They hung over
us, well up in the breeze before meandering away, then swinging down wind. Half
of the birds split off, set up and landed well upwind. The other half continued
to mosey around before dropping flaps and landing in with their mates. We were
snookered. After a couple of minutes we released the dogs to push the birds
away and they took to the air, disappearing
over the horizon. We’d done all we could – there’s absolutely no point in
taking random shots, maybe hitting a few but educating the rest. Hopefully
they’ll keep.
Next time….
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