Zen and the Art of the Goose Hunt

My sons Christian and Scott (first photo) and I went on our first goose hunting trip last weekend in Eagle Lake Texas.

We had a blast. No pun intended.

We were part of a larger group that included 8 high schoolers and 9 adults. The hunt was in Texas rice country at Waterfowl Outfitters Unlimited.

If you haven't goose hunted, it requires silence, stillness, patience, and a bit of luck. You need to take on a Zen-like persona to bag a goose. They are pretty smart and very aware of sounds and movement. If you make noise and move around, you're doomed. They won't come in close enough to be in range to get off a clean shot.

The hunt started with a 4:15AM wake up call. Everyone got dressed and jumped into our trucks which were loaded with shotguns and shells the night before.

Hunting guides came by the lodge with retriever dogs, decoys,and white tunics to make us look like snow geese in the field.

Our group drove in the pitch black darkness for 30 minutes to remote wheat pastures where the geese will be feeding during the day.

Once in the pasture, the first task is to set up the goose decoys. The ones we were using were basically white plastic trash bags with a thin, black streak painted on them and a wooden rod running through the center to anchor them into the pasture. A section of field 20 feet by 80 feet was filled with decoys spaced 3 feet apart.
(photos 2 and 3) When the wind blows, the plastic bags fill up with air and from a distance do look remarkably similar to real snow geese.

After the decoys were in place, we were instructed to lie down 10 feet apart with our shot guns in the middle of the decoys and to lie still and blend in.

Daylight arrived at 7:15AM. The guide told everyone to be still and quiet.

He would begin calling the geese in as soon as flocks would come flying over head in proximity to our pasture.

The flocks started to arrive around 7:30AM. At the same time, black clouds could be seen in the distance. A cold front was blowing in from the East. By 8:00AM, the wind kicked up to 25 miles per hour and the air temperature fell by 25 degrees from the 70's to the 50's. The whole complexion of our day changed in less than an hour. Half of the decoys blew over and had to be reset.

The falling temperatures and high winds had us moving from t-shirts to hooded camouflaged parkas within minutes.

We got conflicting messages from our guide as to the advantages/ disadvantages of the high winds and colder temperatures for hunting. He said that the geese would be flying lower and more likely to want to land due to the difficulty flying against the wind.

After lying on their backs for 30 minutes, the high school boys got impatient and lost their collective "Zen". They started getting up, walking around and horsing around with each other. The movement and noise was scaring off our feathered quarry.

I lied still in my spot on the ground as long as I could. Finally I became indignant at the "rabble rousing" boys and told them to lie down and shut the fx@# up. Very un-Zen of me to get upset but I was lying in that cold wheat field in goose shit on my back getting colder by the minute and sensing that no geese with half a pea-sized brain were going to come within range of our field, given all the cacophony.

The boys did settle down long enough for a single flock of geese to fly over. We bagged a single bird from this group. That was it.

The rest of the morning flocks of geese would approach and then change direction just as they were getting within range of our noisy, moving, and clearly visible hunting party.

After an hour and a half of this, I reconciled myself to the fact that the single goose (photo 4) was going to be the catch of the day. No sense getting upset, the boys were having fun and nothing I was going to say was going to change things. Might as well extract some enjoyment out of just lying in a wheat field.

Silence, stillness, and patience are not part of Texas teen aged boy's make up. They'll need to learn the Zen and the Art of the Goose hunt some other day.
And.....I will need to just be with what ever happens and be happy.

AHO

Richard

PS- I was annoyed that I spent $700.00+ to hunt geese and none would come into our field because all the activity was spooking them. My 700 greenbacks took wing just like the snow geese. They greenbacks and the geese were energetically aligned to escape me.

PS PS- Eagles beat the Giants as I predicted 23-11.....on to the playoffs next week against the Cardinals in Phoenix.