On last day of early goose season three of us entered the field and we left with 5 birds apiece. We started with a quad on the water, when the shot was called, all four were down before I even got a shot. After that the geese came in pairs and trips all morning, until..... The mondo wad showed up, and then it was utter chaos. We were shooting birds, we had birds landing in the decoys and 10-20 birds flocks on the horizon with their minds made up to drop in on us. It was pretty intense for about 15-20 min. then the big flocks moved off and we picked up the bodies.
We were only 3 short, so we decided to wait until 11:20 to try and limit out. In a matter of minutes we had 2 more down, one cripple swimming away to the other side of the pond and trying to make a run for it on land. Weed went to get him on the other side by driving his truck around.
While he was gone Ron and I had one lone goose coming in from over the corn headed straight for us. The funny thing was we were just standing there talking when this guy came in low and fast. As we got down Ron told me to take him, before I could get a safe shot on him he landed. So I had to get up and practically run at this goose to get him to take off. When he did....boom, gravy, so Ron and I started gathering up the decoys and breaking our blinds down. When Weed got back from chasing the goose down he was really perplexed when he saw us gathering everything up. He said ,"don't we have one more?" to which I replied,"nope, shot him when you were gone". So we got everything picked up and got the hero pics taken, and were packing up the trucks when a CO showed up.
Now normally I would've cracked a couple jokes like, "did anyone see my lead shot" or "who gets the extra goose." But something just told me to keep my mouth shut and be respectful, which I did.
This guy was thorough, I mean he checked out our guns which were already cased, our licenses, our shells and our geese.
After we were all checked, he said that the lady across the street had called the sheriff and the CO's to report shot raining down on her house, and also stated that there is no property damage but she was scared to go outside.
I felt bad that she may have had shot hit her house. I also knew that she was far enough that there was no way she could've been hurt by any shot that may have hit her house. We will never know if shot actually did hit her house or if she simply did not want us shooting geese across from her.
After he said why he was there he stated, "I'll be right back with your tickets". I didn't know anything was wrong until right then, apparently one of my buddies just got his license the day before from Meijer and was missing some stuff. He told me he had gone into Meijer and told the sporting goods person that he needed all the licensing to hunt geese. Well the person didn't sell him an IN waterfowl stamp, which he got a ticket for. My buddy also didn't sign across his Federal waterfowl stamp for which he got another ticket. He also forgot to get his HIP number finally catching a break he was only issued a warning. He was in such a hurry to get ready that he just didn't check to make sure his i's were dotted and his t's were crossed. Learn from his mistake and make sure your licenses are correct up to date and you have everything you need to be legal. My buddy neglected to do this and we guesstamated his tickets to be about $300.00. I hope it's not that much but it very easily could be.
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| Weed-Ron-Me |
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