9/1/2019 First Mississippi Goose at Puskus

I’ve had very limited goose hunting experience save once with Matt Lankford and Reed Elkins which at some point resulted in Lankford running naked through a field and at no point involved anything resembling geese including our spread.

Another of my few experiences involved walking and stalking speckledbelly and snow geese on public land with Decker while hunting with my good friends Greg Lynch and Craig Kaspar.

The last involved a trip with Jacob Orr, a man I deeply respect and involved me and hunting buddy Bill Toner being attacked by a flock of Apache helicopters commonly known as greater Canada Geese. That trip involved three dead geese but I suspect our expert guide killed all of them.

Throughout my spring and summer fishing and filming Mississippi ponds and lakes I noticed the abundance of resident Canada geese and got a hankering, or honkering if you will to hunt some. I wanted to see how the dog would respond to big birds and if I was craft enough to bag the bird that boasted enough breast to feed man or beast for a day on one side alone.

I went out to Puskus, a known (to me at least) home of a good number of birds August 30, two days before the opener to look around in the evening. I took an unmaintained trail trying to get to the upper end of the lake and made it to the precipitous trail’s end only to find I wouldn’t be able to cut over access the creek like I had hoped. It wasn’t a total waste of time as I was able to confirm the geese’s presence just after sunset through their loud honking.

The next afternoon, on the eve of the opener, I returned this time with my kayak to look for the two tell-tale signs of resident geese recency: feathers and goose shit. I saw plenty along the creek channel and ditch and resolved to return the next morning with the dog on the kayak, a call but no decoys and try to pass shoot a couple of birds.

I arrived opening morning late (30 minutes before sunrise) and headed out to where the birds were or soon would be. It was foggy and I couldn’t see the upper end clearly as was usually the case but made the heavy trek through the mud listening and looking.

I blew my call a few times and kept paddling. Eventually I got a handful of responses and observed a large group of birds feeding. I eased up to them and just waited, eventually, my presence or some other circumstance caused a mass exodus and I took aim for a lower leaving bird and crumpled it on my first shot, I took aim again at another lower in the flock bird and dropped him as well.

I regret to say that the second bird fell crippled in vegetation and both the dog and I spent a sportsman amount of time seeking its recovery but were unable to do so. I hate that. But he had no problem with size or smell of the other bird and proudly brought it back to the boat where it was met with high praise and excitement on my end.

It was a short, fantastic hunting experience that I suspect I can recreate a time or two again if not at Puskus elsewhere before the short resident season concludes later this month.

I took the bird to Resa’s to show two very interested Barton babies then breasted the harvest, deboned both legs and fed meat to Dublin save a breast portion that I froze and will have added to sausage later in season once I kill a pig.