the spank
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Planet Earth Wearing My Tinfoil Hat
The snow geese finally started arriving sunday so I secured permissionon a field a couple thousands birds were feeding in and went about getting things ready. I called my buddy Ed to say I'd found birds and we agreed to meet to grass the blind for the following day.
90 minutes later his wife calls to say he was taken by ambulance to the hospital with a suspected heart attack.
Well it sure put a damper on mine and Deb's spirits but we decided to get our gear ready to hunt anyways.
We grassed the blind and I continued to check in on Ed.
A few hours later he texted to say he was home relaxing after a stressful day with doctors orders to stay put and no idea what had happened after being poked and prodded all day and that they were going to be running a battery of tests over the next week or so. I told him next time not to get so excited over a few snow geese and scare us all like that!
So with somewhat better news we felt a sense of relief as we put plans together to hunt the next day. Unfortunately Ed was being benched for this hunt but offered us best of luck.
Deb and I headed out about 45 minutes before legal shooting time, set the blind up and put out the decoys. I do not run big spreads for snows as I have found that whether I put out 36 or 3600 it's the same effect so we had 36 full bodies set out, guns, chairs and ammo bags set in the blind and truck parked 1/4 mile away twenty seven minutes after arrival.
I took my seat in the blind next to Deb, put on my shooting glasses, loaded my gun and after we exchanged each other good luck and established a game plan if we were fortunate enough to fool a few into range we started scanning the skies. It wasn't long, maybe 1 minute tops before birds were moving and within 5 minutes we fired our first shots, well I did anyways, lol.
We watched birds trading across the sky for the next hour or so, got excited when groups came our way and laughed off disappointment when they would hang up at 50+ yards.
A pair worked in over the top of the decoys about 30 yards up and I said to Deb you take the one on left and when we stood to shoot our guns each barked one shot in perfect unison and two big adult snows folded and dropped dead in the decoys.
Deb is pretty deadly with her Beretta A400 Xplore 20ga shooting 7/8oz #2 steel and a big grin came across her face as she sat back down pleased she folded the bird first shot and even more pleased as she watched her trained retriever(me) fetch both birds.
We shot at two more pairs knocking down another four birds but sadly we lost one that sailed off into a thick tangle filled slough.
We finished our morning with 6 nice snows, packed up and headed home.
I was really pleased with the performance of the new to me Maxus Sporting Clays I purchased just before the end of 2022. This was my inaugural run with it and it comes up and swings very nicely and cycles flawlessly.
Here are a few pics...
90 minutes later his wife calls to say he was taken by ambulance to the hospital with a suspected heart attack.
Well it sure put a damper on mine and Deb's spirits but we decided to get our gear ready to hunt anyways.
We grassed the blind and I continued to check in on Ed.
A few hours later he texted to say he was home relaxing after a stressful day with doctors orders to stay put and no idea what had happened after being poked and prodded all day and that they were going to be running a battery of tests over the next week or so. I told him next time not to get so excited over a few snow geese and scare us all like that!
So with somewhat better news we felt a sense of relief as we put plans together to hunt the next day. Unfortunately Ed was being benched for this hunt but offered us best of luck.
Deb and I headed out about 45 minutes before legal shooting time, set the blind up and put out the decoys. I do not run big spreads for snows as I have found that whether I put out 36 or 3600 it's the same effect so we had 36 full bodies set out, guns, chairs and ammo bags set in the blind and truck parked 1/4 mile away twenty seven minutes after arrival.
I took my seat in the blind next to Deb, put on my shooting glasses, loaded my gun and after we exchanged each other good luck and established a game plan if we were fortunate enough to fool a few into range we started scanning the skies. It wasn't long, maybe 1 minute tops before birds were moving and within 5 minutes we fired our first shots, well I did anyways, lol.
We watched birds trading across the sky for the next hour or so, got excited when groups came our way and laughed off disappointment when they would hang up at 50+ yards.
A pair worked in over the top of the decoys about 30 yards up and I said to Deb you take the one on left and when we stood to shoot our guns each barked one shot in perfect unison and two big adult snows folded and dropped dead in the decoys.
Deb is pretty deadly with her Beretta A400 Xplore 20ga shooting 7/8oz #2 steel and a big grin came across her face as she sat back down pleased she folded the bird first shot and even more pleased as she watched her trained retriever(me) fetch both birds.
We shot at two more pairs knocking down another four birds but sadly we lost one that sailed off into a thick tangle filled slough.
We finished our morning with 6 nice snows, packed up and headed home.
I was really pleased with the performance of the new to me Maxus Sporting Clays I purchased just before the end of 2022. This was my inaugural run with it and it comes up and swings very nicely and cycles flawlessly.
Here are a few pics...