Day 2, fog and fewer birds

Coch and I had decided to setup on a pond not used on opening to take advantage of its position with regard to the impending northerly. That impending northerly can go and naff itself, it just didn't happen. We found ourselves in the dark moving the decoy spread so that we could take advantage of our layouts. I for one am an avid decoy setter, and so it appears is Coch! As we finished setting up our blinds birds began to appear, a greeting call or 2 had three birds down. And so began an interesting hunt; fog made he ducks hard to locate, so I used my fall back tactic in fog. I know the birds are there, so I simply incessantly chuckle and duck cluck, giving ducks the chance to find us. Unfortunately Coch had issues with his gun not cycling, so even though we were taking turn about I had chances on his birds when the gun wouldn't go off.

 

 

We pulled the pin at midday, when no more birds were up as the sun had finally beaten through, turning the day into a real bluebird number. I was most of the way to a limit so was pretty relaxed.

Coch with our ducks, what a stunner of a day for fishing!

 

Back at base, we readied ourselves for cleaning the bag.

Andy with duck pile

The clean up took until 4pm, at which time Rick & Coch pulled out for work the next day. I hunted with Andy in the evening and took a single duck that his dog flushed, to close out my limit.

Cracker day all round, but at the back of my mind I was worried for the boys I'd invited in to share Monday's shoot. When they arrived at the ramp at 9.30pm I was there to bring them back to the hut... I think they were a bit shocked at my state, I was barely able to stay awake....

Photo courtesy Daryl Snowdon

Opening shots

A few of the guys had said that the week leading up to opening had not been all that tense or laden with excitement; not so for me. By the end of last week I was a wreck. The crew for opening had changed up a bit, with Larry and Dickie to be joining us; Dickie's dad however had suffered a stroke so Dickie was not able to hunt with us. Dad, Larry & my uncle Tom had arrived at the hut on Thursday to get set up and take it easy; as retirees they've done the hard yards already. My bro was across from Aussie, along with Daryl Snowdon; a shotgun & shooting nut from Mouth Island (mainland Au). By Friday afternoon, Andy and Rick had arrived, dekes were set and the hut packed out; we still had Coch, my bro Greg and Darryl to pick up, so a couple of trips up and down the river were needed. Finally with all aboard we kicked back for dinner and a few drinks. You can't beat the camaraderie of the old crew and relatively new; hunting brings all types together.

With ponds allocated, gear sorted and everything readied it was time to hit the hay. The sleep before opening is the worst in the whole year. I normally find myself lying listening to snores, dogs grunting... so I'm running on little sleep and lots of adrenaline by the time the alarm goes.

Andy and I were on brekkie rattled up endless plungers of coffee, a feed of bacon and scrambled eggs... and then it was time to ship out. Coch and I were on our south-westernmost pond. We'd agreed that for us we'd take mallard drakes only. Dad and Daryl were at the Willow Pond, Greg and Rick at The Park, Andy at McLennan's and Larry & Tom at Puru.

Coch and I had decided to start in the maimai, but with a Northerly forecast we'd taken along our layout blinds so we could take advantage of being able to setup correctly for the wind.

Wasp nest :)

Misted camera; view of Coch from the layout

Pond from layout

 Coch and I teamed up really well. We'd not hunted diucks much together in the past, with our joint efforts mainly being on geese. We'd decided that we'd shoot turn-about rather than lay into the birds arriving. This allowed us to precisely pick out drakes and by midday we were done. It'd been an awesome hunt and one for the memory banks.

We cruised back to the hut to find Dad, Daryl, Greg and Rick all in with limit bags, leaving Tom, Larry and Andy in the field. I'll hand it to Andy, he'd made a call to take mallard drakes only and had stuck to it, leaving the myriad of grey ducks and mallard hens that came in well alone. By midday he was on 3 birds, so when we went to drop his lunch off we suggested that he begin to widen his focus. later in the afternoon, I went up to his maimai to help him call in birds. As the light began to drop away he pulled off some amazing shots (by now it was shoot anything) and with 5 minutes to go filled out his bag. Super satisfying to make the most of the whole day!

Much hilarity was had that evening, with the swamp crew AGM held, resolutions passed and issues discussed. I was well stuffed by bedtime and knew that on this night I'd sleep like a baby.

Another opening day done.

Doing stuff to stop from going crazy

I can't handle this week. I couldn't as a kid, a teen-ager, or a semi-wastrel long haired uni student. Opening day of the duck season is bigger than Texas. Wayyy bigger than Xmas. Greenheads with feet down dropping on cupped wings into the set.... greys swoop low over the trees... flocks of mallards circle, looking to commit.... swans pass on graceful wings. Will some clown open up at 06:00, 30 minutes before legal time? Will the first ducks in stay?

Enough already. Best thing to do is to stay busy, and try and block these thoughts out. And buy stuff. The newest toy will be a new GK Call Girl.

I say "will be" because whilst its in the country, I've yet to lay my hands on it. Can't wait!

Apart from buying stuff, (naturally this pursuit is limited by budget) I've emptied my freezer completely, and restacked it. My last ducks from previous season have been eaten, but I still have a few pheasants. Found some goose schnitzel (sliced breast) which I prepared for dinner last night (bloody good) by crumbing and frying in a butter and olive oil mix.

Even better though, I found the ribs (inc chops) from the boar I shot earlier in the year. Time for smoky ribs...

First thing when preparing ribs, is that there's a membrane on the inner side. Remove by lifting and running a table knife along the membrane. This is important, because you'll want the rub flavours to get into the meat.

Prepare your rub. I used:

Ted's (World Famous - bet you never heard of it!) Bone Dust
Brown Sugar
Garlic Powder

White sugar

Sweet paprika

Black pepper

White pepper

Cayenne pepper

Onion powder

Mix it all together, then pat onto the ribs, both sides. Make sure its all covered. Then into fridge for 24 hours.


Make a glaze.

I used:

Bradley's Maple cure
Piripiri sauce
Rufus Teague's arse flaming burning hot ring-sting barbecue sauce
Garlic salt
Lime juice

Mix it up, and coat onto chilled ribs with a brush.

I cranked up the Bradley smoker, then cranked it back down to 90 degrees C. On with smoke and in with ribs. Leave alone for at least 3 hours, swapping racks in smoker now and again.

Ohhhhhh yeahhhhhhh.

I let them cool and then vac packed. All ready to go hunting..... better have a few cold beers on hand!

Whatever floats your.... decoy

“Idle hands are the devil’s plaything” – or so goes the old saying. Fact is that (at this time of year in particular) I have a bit of trouble relaxing. I’m not great at doing nothing, so find it relaxing to just do stuff like tie flies, untangle decoy cords, drill holes in boat for latest fitting…. Well, you get the idea.
  

Of late I’ve been thinking of ways to float a spin-wing decoy at sea. “At sea” means in rough weather, when hunting’s at its best out there. There are lots of ideas on the internet. Some involve H shaped bars, where a decoy on each corner supports a central upright upon which the flapper sits. Not ideal for me, I don’t want to be lugging 4 more decoys in the little boat than I have to. Then there are similar arrangements with a + shape, with bits of foam on the arms again holding up a central post upon which electronica is perched. Looks a bit unstable to me.

Finally I tracked down a really good option. The original involved a life preserver, some board, stainless nuts & bolts and fittings. And a can of cement for an anchor.

I decided on a similar approach. First – let me tell you it’s not easy to source a cheap life preserver. (I guess that you can put a price on preserving life after all). Finally I tracked an old one down. As everyone knows, these things come in a range of colours – the range being from vibrant orange to eye-searing orange-vermillion.  I grabbed a spray can of grey primer and went to work. Then a nice piece of treated board was procured, along with stainless nuts and bolts. Unlike the version I’d seen on the ‘net, my life ring has holes that are ideal mounting points so I didn’t have to screw into the body of the ring. Drilled and countersunk (flash huh!) holes for the bolts and got the board mounted.

The old outdoors spray booth.

Sat around for a bit thinking about how to mount the pole then had one of those DOH! moments. I’d just use the Railblaza stuff I had left over.  Too easy.

Simply attach a Starport into which goes a Telepole onto which fits a Swivelport into which the decoy's mounting base is inserted.

With my anchor light attached, you get my drift... decoy goes where light is

Spray it all grey and whammo, there's the base and mount done. Now just a matter of anchoring it. I'll just get one of those little grapnel anchors and use that, I think I have a couple hanging around.

Now, just add decoy...

In anticipation of the coming season's harvest...

At this time of year, I scour the freezer for any remnants of last year's ducks and pheasants. The past couple of weeks I've enjoyed pheasant salad for lunch at the office; not many people in the jungle of office buildings I work in get to do that I suspect.

Pheasant Salad

You guys can work out the greens, etc for yourself; but here's how I do my pheasant so that it remains moist.

For a start, I've been brining the birds prior to freezing, so that they take on a whole lot of liquid and freeze better. Place your de-frosted, rinsed and dried bird breast up on chopping board. Using cleaver or big F-off knife, split the bird along breast, peel open and cut down backbone so your bird's 'spatchcocked'. Do a couple of birds at one time.

Take wide flat pan, add olive oil, a bit of garlic salt, and fresh thyme which you've just plucked from your herb garden. Or dried stuff if cats have gotten into your herb garden and shat it to death. Heat the pan to medium high heat, and place your bird into it, skin down. Cook until nicely browned and then turn bird over. Same on other side. Do second bird. Reserve yummy seasoned oil from pan.

Into good sized sauce pan, put a rough chopped onion, 3 cloves garlic, 3 juniper berries, some chopped up celery, a smackeral of paprika, the reserved oil, 3 bay leaves and heat until the onion is soft. By now yummy smells have filled the house - yeah boi!

Add pheasants skin side up, cover half of birds with apple juice, then top up with water and a chicken stock cube. Chop up an apple and stuff it in there. In fact you could chuck anything you like in at this stage as long as it goes with the theme. I biffed in a capsicum.

Now bring mixture to a boil, and then whack the heat down to low, so we have a simmer. I leave this on low heat all day, checking now and again. At least 4 hours on low does it, but I've gone longer. You'll know when it's done, because meat will fall off bone.

leave to cool, then drain. Flake meat into container with some of the stock. Put legs to one side for a snack, even with sinews removed they aren't great salad material.

Boom, now you've got a week's worth of pheasant salad materials.

a few hours of cooking to go

Duck Satay

I fluked this recipe when I was stuck for something to take to a pot luck dinner. It rocks. Take your duck (which freeze much better than pheasants) and rinse out the cavity and pat dry with paper towel. I stuff my birds with sage & onion stuffing. Put birds into oven bag (this is super important - if you've ever been served a dried up baked duck you'll know what I mean..), and get your orange 'splashing sauce' which you spent way too much for down at the fresh food market, and splash it on. If no sauce just get good old marmalade, and rub it one. Into oven bag with some liquid (again super important - orange juice is good) and into oven for a couple hours at 170 degrees.

In other words, cook your duck as you normally would. Near end of cooking, prepare your satay sauce as follows;

Go here for super easy really yummy sauce recipe

I'm not going to reinvent wheel with my own attempt at a sauce that's been made for a zillion years!

Take cooked duck from oven, and break into halves, or if you can be stuffed, break right down by taking meat from bone. Drown in satay sauce and BOOM! That's the shizzle right there.

Ducks in oven - sizzle shizzle!

Flying visit

Easter Saturday. Road traffic should be about as light as it can get, Stuff needs to be moved to the swamp so today's as good a time as any, and better than some.

A flying visit was in order, to finish up a few preps. At the back of my mind that wasp nest was bugging me, I knew that taking it out would get me stung a few times. At least.

I met dad at the landing at 9 and we trundled downriver in The Booger, heavily laden with all sorts of crap that we cart in to the ponds. Arriving at the hut we inspected the traps; good results with a ferret and a rat killed. Vermin is ever present and while we'll never really stay on top of it at least we can put a dent in the local pestilence population.

We got out to the ponds and put off a range of ducks, mallards, greys and grey teal. A few swan were in residence as well. The ponds looked great, spray work having taken care of the majority of weeds.

We got to the site of the wasp nest, and dad put me ashore with a container of petrol/diesel mix. I snuck in close to the nest without being stung! and poured a few litres into the nest. Then a quick retreat to the boat and back to light a wick - BOOOOOOMFAHHH! (This part is not necessary, the fuel mix on its own kills the vermin. I just like a good inferno).

Where there's smoke...



.. there's fire



Bye bye wasps



Quite satisfying to wipe out the black and yellow menace. And without copping a sting!

So with the duck season only 2 weeks away, we enter the sleepless zone. Anticipation overwhelms the need for sleep. Its going to be a long slow drag ....

How to make 100 ducks into 300 ducks, an experiment in bird rearing

I've not said much about our little project pond for a while now. The basic premise that we had at the outset was that if we created some habitat, used some existing habitat, and supplemented the duck population we might be able to create a pond from where a sustainable harvest is possible.

Ducklings were procured, (and by god are they a damn sight easier to raise than pheasants!) and released into the pond. Feed was purchased. The ducklings took to their new surrounds immediately; and predation losses were low. Matt's been a good dad, arranging daily meals for the birds and cover while he and Gina have been away. To be honest, I've not gone up to the pond since the birds arrived so have been enjoying their progress vicariously through reports from Matt & Tony.

We'd decided that if we put down 100 birds, that we'd harvest 10% less and by doing so leave a portion of the population to hopefully breed.

Here's a montage of shots over their growing up journey.

 

 

Over a period of time the brood has grown up, flown around, found mates and from the original 100 birds we're now feeding 3 times that number. Gregarious creatures that they are, they've told 2 mates each that foods available back at the green pond.

Tony took a short vid of some of the birds feeding and preening. A couple of free-loading parries in there, but they seem to be coexisting nicely.

This hasn't been an overly expensive exercise when split 4 ways; hopefully a few more guys will get encouraged enough to try something similar.

Breaking with tradition

At this time of the year our household traditionally has the first fire of the year to warm the house, but there are no signs of needing to do so in the next short while. The warm temperatures and lack of consistent rainfall have made this almost an indian summer (I know that every second year I repeat myself on the weather theme).

But anyway, a month later than usual I trundled down to get in a metre of Totara - beautiful dry wood and if I could store more I'd be tempted to buy another metre to get us through, because by the time winter's over only wet smoke causing wood is available normally. Most of our duck pond preps are done, I just need to transport some decoys and stuff in prior to the season, and to deal to a nasty German Wasp nest that'll trap some poor unsuspecting hunter or dog. It's in a sizable hole in the ground so unless water levels rise dramatically (unlikely) the vicious little buggers will play havoc.

The count down to the game bird season is on; tradition dictates last minute pond work but we're on top of everything mostly thanks to the old guys now being retired and able to put time in at their leisure. Hunting preps include getting the boat shaken down; she went in for her annual service on Friday and I picked her up Saturday - need to replace a wheel bearing (!!!) and one of the LED marker lights on the trailer is dead. No biggies, just a morning's work over Easter. Normally at this time of the year I don't have too much free time to chase finny creatures but having seen constant workups along the East Coast Bays as the kahawai, snapper and terns push anchovies into meat balls and having had the boat readied I thought I'd give it a nudge.

With high tide at 6am, moon down and no wind at all, Sunday morning was too good an opportunity to miss. Onboard with 4kg of pilchards, the 8 weight and a berley bomb. I'd opted to fish a reef that I'd been reseaching. If I could get setup pre-dawn with berley pumping there'd be every chance of good autumn snapper. So it proved. At the spot @ 05.30 and over with the chum. Some guys came screaming in with no nav lights switched on, so I fired up my anchor light (which by law I should've had on anyway - just didn't want to adverise my presence to the snaps) - they drifted around preparing their gear before buzzing off. Phew, I hate competition. As the sun rose over Rangitoto the first bite was received, a solid take that resulted in a nice 2kg fish hitting the deck. It was 30 minutes before the next take, the line had gone slack so i knew the fish had picked up the bait and run upcurrent. I got tension on and hit the fish which took off like a demented thing - great stuff on the 4kg outfit.

Perfect millpond conditions - urban fishing

The fish itself was just over 3.5kg when landed, into the slurry it went. By 9.30 I had 6 snapper in ice slurry (one a fat 4kg model) and was feeling pretty pleased. Then kahawai began breaking around the boat - they'd pushed anchovies into the reef. Out with the fly road. Fat pre-spawning kahawai on the fly rod are the ultimate light tackle workout. They just go faster than kingis of the same size, and burn out line like nothing else. For every fish landed, 2 smashed me. My final snapper took a clouser high in the water column and dragged me reefward. Having tuned and controlled him I was stunned and pleased to see another 2.5kg fish wallowing beside the boat. Given my need for fish to feed the hunting clan in a couple of weeks, he was another candidate for vacuum packing. 7 snapper of >30cm is the new SNA1 area limit (as at April 1), and given that I rarely catch a limit let alone keep one - well another tradition broken! What a neat day. Might have to break some more traditions soon.

Old school fishing

In the late 80's I was a uni student. I had a part time job - in a fishing/shooting sports store of course, which paid my rent and allowed me to meet guys with similar interests. Long term friendships were forged and they remain strong to this day. Brian had access to his dad's boat, a Steadecraft I think it was, in the 14'6" range. We'd take her out on an evening, fish late into the night and then sleep aboard in the clothing we wore. It got cold - I remember that - but being 19 or so years of age sleeping on a cold deck wasn't the drama of cramps, aches and pains it would be today! We'd berley hard and fish West Australian pilchards into the reefs and rocky areas around The Noises, Maria, Ahaahaas and various bits of foul. The fishing varied from very good to kinda average, depending on moon, tide, time of day, but one of us almost always scored a fish "over 5kg" amongst the catch (maybe my memory has faded a bit...).

I'm not young enough to consider sleeping in The Booger, she's an inshore/day craft but the weather over the weekend was too appealing to ignore. I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I needed to be there before 06.00 to have the berley pumping. There was almost no breeze to speak of when I arrived at Castor Bay to launch, however the remnants of a SE swell (peaking at a massive 12"!!) rolled in now and again, not the usual for the bay. Meant I couldn't risk backing in as far as usual as I didn't want a wave to dump over the door sill into the truck (equates to instant write off as far as insurance is concerned!. I downloaded the boat into just enough water to float her, turned her into the "swell" and anchored her. What I didn't notice was that I'd given the transducer a decent smack.... On with chart plotter, everything ship-shape and off I went. The water was glassy and I managed a reasonable 22.5 kts. The trip was smooth and arriving at my spot I turned on the sounder - hello, no signal. I reached over the stern to push the transducer into position... and it was floating. Sh1t, I'd managed to completely dismount it - rather than kicking up it had dislodged. Damn. Oh well I'd have to set the anchor by memory rather than park exactly on the rock in question. The berley went out first, then handfuls of cubed pilchard remnants from a previous trip. On the darkness a hoard of jack mackerel swam in the berley, followed by a cloud of piper. I tell myself now that the first fish that took a bait wasn't a snapper, but deep down I know it was, a screaming take then as I set the hook the big head shakes.. it made cover in seconds and pinged me. A quick re-rig and then a short wait. The next fish hit like a train but I got him under control and played out a 3kg fish in beautiful condition. Rapt! Following that came a succession of hits starting at about 07.00 as the sun came up and half a dozen nice pannies came to hand. I kept a couple and then a horse kahawai for the smoker. They were boiling around the boat - fly time! 2.5kg kahawai on the #6 are a fly fisher's dream - guaranteed to give you a sore arm. I boated several and then the temptation got too much for another boat, who came in to anchor in my berley trail. I spazzed out a bit before another passing boat kindly gave the guy the message that I wasn't happy, so he upped anchor and moved.

The fish went off the boil after the sun was well up but it was a nice place to be, plus with nowhere else I had to be I wasn't exactly in a hurry to take off.

Funny thing here - when I returned to Castor bay and anchored to go and get the truck, I saw a black wedge shaped object washing around in the small waves - turned out to be the spacer that goes between my transducer and the hull - it had been knocked off some 6 hours earlier! Should have gone and bought a lotto immediately.

Old school still works.

I'm not sure that 1,000 rounds would have helped me...

The last couple of goose expeditions I've been on have been kind of lean pickings from a harvest perspective (by my own choice & circumstances I've avoided or missed a couple of the productive sessions the boys have had lately), but man there's been some birds to be seen - in the past 2 hunts I've seen at least a thousand geese and only shot one.....

950 (ok, ok that's just a wild stab in the dark, there was a shitwack of birds..) of those thousand came in gabbling mobs, circling our paddock sounding like migratory goose-herds. We were set up in a paddock, all 8 of us (its not easy hiding 8 people) as mobs swirled from the left, right and behind, looking down at our spread before deciding something wasn't quite right and moving on. It's hard to be pissed off when you get to see a sight like that.

How good was our camo?

Blind - well camo'd

Good enough I think. Were we on the X? Yeah, the place was layered in kak, even the bright white troughs were surrounded and the birds should've been used to those by now...

So there was another reason, perhaps the fading wind and the shots taken at the first mob that arrived had unsettled the local population. Never mind, it was a sight I'll never forget.

The other 50 (making up the 1,000) geese were seen on an evening hunt where only one mob came in, (and they did so beautifully, feet down in the breeze). 13 came in and most of them left. I took my first bird, watched the mob split, followed 2 birds to the right and didn't fire as they went into Tony's zone, swung back to cover birds going out and rather pathetically emptied my mag well above the bird I was chasing (yup, head not down on stock, an affliction that gets me now and again).

I giggled because I don't get that hung up on shooting disasters and also because our plan looked like a spectacular success and because well, just because. That was the only mob that came our way, the rest just flew on and on and on... so much for spectacular successes.

When I arrived home SWMBO pushed a package at me - turns out my Briley extension mag had arrived. I fitted it and sat back to revel in the joyous fact that from 5 shots originally,  I had now almost doubled my gun's capacity! Yeah!

 

The fact is that I can now pack in more rounds than I've fired in 2 hunts. On the past couple of hunts, I'm not sure that if I had 1,000 rounds at my disposal it would have helped particularly.... *sigh*

Houses, relocation, Zon guns, hounds and hunts

Open homes are the current bane of my life.

My family’s need is driven by getting the Justin Bieber Fan Club into the ‘right’ school zones to ‘guaranty a better education’. Uh-huh. Summer seems to have been a trudge from home to home, checking little boxes – must haves that without, the house couldn’t really be a home. My wants are simple; Room to turn and store the boat, lots of storage for decoys and a man cave. Practical stuff like internal access from the garage, a laundry room (as opposed to washing machine placed in garage – a ‘90s fad) – enough bedrooms, well those are on the checklist too, not that I’m so fussed about where I wash my clothes… So the weekend just past held an open home on each day.

I had hoped to be able to travel to Waitomo to release our pheasants but she’s 3 hours each way from my place so not an option. This year the dark moon coincides nicely with weekends, so was prime goosing time. When Coch sms’d to say that several hundred geese were snacking on a chicory paddock and needed moving on I was pretty keen after a lean summer on the geese. So Saturday 5am saw me pull up to meet the boys at Rick’s (Lick’s) place. To cut down on vehicles we threw all our gear (blinds, decoys) into Lick’s little boat and hitched it to my truck, then set off to catch up with The Don (George) at Goose Mafia Central. We got there to find that George wasn’t coming with us, recently he had had a major operation and while he’s still recovering hasn’t much energy. Who we did find though was Council For the Defence (CFD – Andrew) waiting for us. In with his gear and we set off. A slow drive saw us reaching the farm and then travelling slowly to the hunting spot. In the dark I was totally disoriented (as usual some would day!) but we found our spot, and while Lick & Coch set the spread, CFD and I went willow weed plucking to fill out the blind camo. By 0600 we were set when BOOM, BOOM-BOOM – a gas operated bird scaring (Zon) gun went off about 100m away with a spray of sparks in the darkness. Hunting near a bird scaring gun – well a mate from the Wairarapa had told me that he’d been there done that before… after a while the geese just ignore the blimmin things. Here’s hoping I thought to myself… at 0700 the first ragged flock of geese appeared from the lake and set sail towards us. As they passed the Zon gun, it went off (as it did every 15 minutes or so) and the geese barely registered, they were so set on breakfast. They came straight in on set wings which was handy as there was almost no wind – which makes setting the birds difficult – and we laid into them. The next couple of hours saw some quite amazing hunting for a number of reasons. First because we witnessed some pretty amazing goose behaviours, some of which were new to me – such as a wave of geese landing into our spread and all around us – and one big gander charged up to a sentry decoy hissing and hurling goose abuse. On another occasion 2 waves of geese landed on my side of the spread – and rather than getting shots on departing birds we elected to put them off. As I sat up waving my hands they simply ran like a flock of road runners (beep-beep – like the cartoon) and I had to run at them to get them up and away. Secondly because the geese appeared to be drawn by our shots, possibly because they were using the Zon gun to navigate to their breakfast patch? Under the conditions the hunt worked really well, and by 9.30 we were carting goose bodies to the edge of the paddock to clear our spread somewhat. When pack-up time came, the count was 93 birds, a fantastic hunt.

The poor boat trailer was well overloaded as we left and the drive was slow to avoid potholes and wrecking the springs.

warm weather hunting

We stopped and talked with the farmer – he was rapt with our efforts (probably not so happy that 100 birds came back in the afternoon though…).

Back at The Don’s the ‘legging crew’ (we take the beasts, they love the legs for stews etc) were waiting and the production line got underway. We chewed through the pile, got the meat chilled and bagged then said our goodbyes and got back to Lick’s place.

CFD, Lick and I then headed off to Tui Ridge to move some feeders around and top them up. Having done that I hit the road – Open Home time. Joy. While I like the idea of a huge swimming pool, I had to question the need for all the extra bedrooms, 3 living areas.. well, it wasn’t us. Got to fly the flag though I suppose.

That evening Mick posted up photos of the bird release at Waitomo, it seemed to have gone really well with Craig, Mick & Mitch getting the job done. It’s a dirty job – upshot was birds relocated – thanks lads. And I mean THANKS lads.

Photos courtesy Mick

Then the pivotal moment of the weekend.

Matt sms’d… he’d found birds in a spot where I’d seen them before but not for quite some time. The farmer was sick to the eye teeth of watching them turn his livelihood into goose kak and his wife greeted Matt’s approach with great enthusiasm. SWMBO greeted my hints at a hunt with less than great enthusiasm… trouble… by the time we were wheeling the trolley around the supermarket, trouble had turned to a distinctly icy atmosphere… by the time shopping was unloaded at home and I was applying fake grass to my blind the situation in the Ukraine looked like a mild hiccup in the history of world events in comparison… by the time my feeble promises of more home time in the future were rebuffed I knew I had taken it too far…. Matt had said no need for an early start, say meet and be set up by 10, so with a nice (terse) family breakfast out of the way and my chores done (“Shall I vacuum the entire house including the garage dear?”) I set off.

We met up at 9.30, got my stuff into his truck and headed down to the paddock. Our arrival coincided with that of the first 2 flocks of geese – we were gutted! I felt bad because I’d held up the whole thing, but we got set with a couple dozen shell dekes and sat back and waited.

Hunting with an audience

Soon a flight appeared and came towards us from behind and to the left – we had a decent breeze and they set perfectly. Then began the numpty shooting show… we were average and got more average as the hunt progressed…. That flight gave us 3 birds and the other 8 flew away honking and huffing… not great. Small groups, singles and pairs all gave us chances and the tally increased in small increments. The final 2 flights that approached caught us on the hop and out of our blinds as they’d appeared from completely the ‘wrong’ direction… the first mob set down in the creek so Matt released his lab Zulu to put them up. They were reluctant to fly and when they did, set down in a paddock 150m away. Not good as competing against real birds is difficult.. then next birds came in, saw the live birds, then swung towards us before pulling out at long range. We laid into them and dropped a couple – the rest simply few over to our competitors and landed.

Happy, happy...

That signalled the end of the hunt so we dressed the birds in the field, bagged the meat and got ready to go (but not before the farmer’s wife came over to thank us – profusely and for a very long time...). Matt had to go and visit his wife in hospital, she’d taken a fall off a horse so I offered to look after Zulu and get the meat chilled.

Masterstroke! The dog’s presence completely took the attention away from my ‘husbandarial misdeeds’ as the girls patted, hugged and made a fuss of him. Open Home 2 was viewed with dog in tow – what a pleasure to walk a dog on a slack lead. Zulu behaved perfectly and when Matt came to collect him I thought great in-roads into getting a dog had been made.

But at that time it was not opportune to push the issue…….