Waterfowl opener 2025 is in the books. Remember as kids the chant we'd use "gimme gimme never gets"?
Well we eventually "got" but it was no "gimme". We were socked in bad with a combination of heavy forest fire smoke and I truly believe the heaviest fog I've ever driven and hunted in. I actually went off the road onto the grass edge at least 4 times on the gravel road and I was not speeding by any means.
The birds sat tight most of the morning squawking up a storm on the lake behind us in our blinds as we waited patiently hoping the fog would lift.
We had a few ducks and geese come early in the pea soup sky but you could not see them until they were almost on top of you. They would suddenly materialize out of the fog and then disappear as they circled to return to the decoys. Fortunately my buddy Ben and I were both on our shooting game today and very few birds that came to the spread left.
Both of us also are sure this is the first time either of us can remember seeing, never mind shooting a snow goose on opening day and this is my 48th season! We had a pair of mature snow geese come in flying with a pair of giant canadas, that in itself is unusual because giant canadas hate snows and will usually not tolerate mixing with them. The four swung into my side of the spread leaving Ben without an opportunity to shoot as they came deep and passed by me. I stood, fired at and dumped the closest snow, swung to the second, fired and missed then recovered from the shock I had missed such an easy close shot and swung to the nearest big honker and folded it. It was cool to get a snow goose on opening day.
We finished off our morning with our 2 man limit of dark geese consisting of 13 canadas & 3 specks, a bonus white goose(snow), 11 mallards and I blooded my new to me Browning Maxus Sporting Golden Clays!
We dressed out our birds and headed home. I processed the birds I'd kept, washed up and made lunch and am enjoying a bite as I write this.
Next up...NAP TIME!
