We are proud to be able to bring you articles on Goose Hunting by Dennis Hunt (The Goose Hunters Friend).
			Dennis is the author of a number of books on Goose Hunting,   and numerous articles on the subject. After 42 years of chasing Geese, Dennis needs 10 more to reach the astounding mark of 13,000 birds.
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	MY BEST GOOSE HUNT IN 40 YEARS. By DENNIS HUNT – The friend of the goose hunter. As my goose- hunting career is coming to an end due to bad knees, I like to look back at the good hunts, bad hunts. good times and bad experiences. I like to look back at my best goose hunt ever while trying to stay humble. This is how it went. I went up to Saskatchewan a few years ago and I was going to meet a couple of friends from down south. I was looking forward to hunting with them because they were good goose hunters and I like to hunt with a small hunting party or else alone. Little did I know that they had invited 3 more guys to join the 3 of us! Anyway, it turned out to be my best hunt ever and I will tell you how and why. We started out hunting on Monday morning near Spaulding, Saskatchewan after we had found as many as 40,000 snow and blue geese as well as 1,000 mallards. They were feeding in 3 small pea fields that were no larger than 30 acres. Legal shooting time was 6:20am and the daily limits were 20 snow geese each and 8 mallards each. There was no possession limit on snow geese but the possession limit on mallards was 16 each. We had 2 hunters each in the three fields and ended up our day with 75 snow geese and 25 mallards. We were done hunting at 9am! We went back to the motel, cleaned the birds, put them on ice and placed them in the walk-in cooler in the bar of our motel. As we ate lunch, we had a toast to – A GREAT DAY GOOSE HUNTING. There was no way that we could have a better day than this day but it happened the next day! Here is what happened! We scouted on Monday afternoon and found the snow geese feeding only 2 miles from the spot that we clobbered them on Monday morning. Again, they were feeding in small pea fields. One field was in a valley while the other 2 fields were up on a hill. We got permission to hunt on that property and we had a meeting to get our game plan coordinated. The weather was supposed to be clear and warm with almost no wind. What fields were we going to use? I talked the group into using the lower field because we would be looking east and into the sun if we hunted the upper fields. We would place our Final Approach blinds in a row about 10 feet apart. The blinds would be 20 yards downwind from the decoys and we would cover them with pea vines picked up from the field. As the geese and mallards would arrive, they would focus on the decoys and not see the 6 piles of pea vines with hunters waiting for them. Because I was the most experienced goose hunter in the group, I was elected Captain on that special day. There were a few more things to talk over and one was, what to do with the vehicles? We had 4 trucks and I talked my hunting companions into placing 2 of them in the other 2 fields. That way, if the geese wanted to continue feeding in those other 2 pea fields, they would be – out of luck because the trucks were parked in the fields. If they wanted to eat peas in that area then, they would have to come into our field. My 5 hunting companions were skeptical but I had convinced them that my plan would work. We got up at 4am because we were staying in Melfort, Saskatchewan and had to drive almost 40 miles to get to our spot. We set up 96 big foot decoys in snow and blue as well as 288 North Wind windsocks. We had 8 North Wind snow goose hovering windsocks situated on the sides of the decoys to make them conspicuous! The decoys were placed in family groups of 7 with each decoy 3’ apart. The family groups were 10 yards apart. The decoy spread looked great! We got the decoys set up, our gear taken out of the trucks and the trucks parked. It was 6am so we had a safety meeting while sitting in our blinds. I instructed everyone that – no one would leave the blind unless we had a time-out. The coffins on our Final Approach blinds would remain closed until I gave the word – TAKE EM! All dead geese would remain on the ground and we would dispatch any cripples within range. We did not use a dog because a dog was not necessary in small fields such as those in Saskatchewan. Everyone was in agreement with what I had instructed them and we sat back in our blinds drinking At 6:25 the mallards began to buzz over our decoys and we shot almost 30 of them in the first 10 minutes. The snow geese began to arrive from the roost pond and they came and came and we shot and shot. When we finished shooting at 8:15, we had our limit of 48 mallards and 117 snow and blue geese. Most of our shots were easy 15 to 25 yard shots as dead geese and ducks were piled up within our decoy spread. No ducks or geese attempted to land in the upper fields where the trucks were parked. Our game plan was flawless as the 6 hunters all had exceptional shooting days and the ducks and geese cooperated and gave me – MY GREATEST GOOSE HUNTING DAY.