Brian called me on the evening of January 5th and said that thousands of canadian geese were using a couple of fields north of Independence that we have permission to hunt. Brian shot one of his two MO gobblers off the property this past spring, but we hadn't been back out there since. After checking on the birds yesterday morning and verifying they were still using the fields, we sorted out a plan of attack for the afternoon.
I met Brian at his house around 2pm to load our gear. We pulled up to the property around 2:20pm and I was amazed at the number of geese . It was the single biggest flock of canadians I've ever seen in one place. The flock spread at least a 1/4 mile across the field with thousands of birds packed together. The adjoining property to the east had an unpicked corn field and the geese were just as thick on that side of the fence. The KC area was expecting 3-6"of snow with record cold tempertures overnight and the snow was already starting to come down when we arrived. We pulled the truck in along the north side of the corn and literally had birds within 30yrds of the rig, with the edge of the main flock maybe 100yrds in front of us. Because of the weather conditions and available food source, the birds would not move. As we made our way into the field the flock just stayed 80-100yrds in front of us, but none of the birds were leaving either of the fields. There was one lone cedar tree on the our side of the property line and that was the location we chose for our setup.
The flock knew we were there, but it was only a matter of time before birds moving from the roosting field to the corn to feed, would offer us chip shots.
After about twenty minutes the intensity of the snow had picked up significantly and the leading edge of the roosting flock had worked within 70 yrds of our location. The cedar tree we used as cover couldn't have been planted in a better location. It kept the snow off our backs and the drifts of snow around it's trunk hid us extremely well.
Brian called the first shots as a group of 4 geese cut right into us as they headed for the corn. Brian got hung up in his king sized sheet he was using for cover and missed the first gimmie shot of the afternoon. I followed up with a school girl effort and clean missed my shot....it would help if I put my cheek on the stock while aiming! After the first report thousnads of birds errupted into the air and a small group of 3 birds flew right into us. I stoned the lead bird straight away and Brian followed that up by scratching out one of the other two birds in the group. The big flock circled around the fields but didn't move more than a couple hundred yards, so we just tucked back into our cedar blind. We waited another 30 minutes before birds started working closer and closer to us by the minute. Around 4:30pm we had a coulpe birds break off and cut toward us and Brian smashed the lead bird. After picking his bird up we were contemplating leaving when a group of 12 geese got up out of the corn field. They flew right over our cedar and I finished our hunt off by crushing our 4th goose of the evening.
The birds were still in the fields this moring, so with any luck we'll be back after them this weekend!
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