SNOW STORMS!

At the end of the Jet Boat Adventure (note the capital letters!) I returned to The Oasis in Calgary late one afternoon.  I no longer recall what day of the week, nor which date that may have been, but anyways I was weary from the trip and happy to be back to town.  In the course of my unpacking and so on, I checked out my e-mail, which I had not been able to read for the better part of a week.  (The Super 8 motel in Athabasca claims to have free wifi, with an in-room laptop, but that device exists mostly to drive people into fits of impotent rage at a machine that keeps booting back to somebody else’s Internet choices, pay-on-demand TV anyone?)  Anyways, back in Calgary I had somewhat reliable Internet, when the service did not require me to re-start my computer every five minutes or so.  But I digress.  As usual.

So amongst the messages awaiting my return was one from an acquaintance in Lloydminster, SK, whom I had met a number of years ago through a gun deal.  Frank is an avid waterfowler, and we were hoping to find a time when he could get some days off and if I could be in the area, we would go out for a waterfowl hunt.  He works in the oilfields as a safety guy, and has been working pretty much non-stop since an oil spill happened on the North Saskatchewan River earlier this year.  He had previously thought he would have some days off when I planned to be going through his area, then he worked through another set of days off, and things were not looking too optimistic.  BUT!!!  He had scored some days off, and he and a buddy had found a flock of many thousands of snow geese which they would be hunting TOMORROW and he hoped I could be there for a 4 am start.  It was at this point some time after 4 pm the day before the proposed hunt, I had just hit town after a long hunt, and the drive to Lloydminster would be six hours or so.  Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm, NO.

So I looked at the pictures Frank sent of the CLOUDS of snow geese that would be on the next day’s hunting agenda, and confess that I felt a bit sorry for myself that I was perforce going to miss this opportunity.  But I got ahold of Frank via phone and found out he still had a few more days off, so we made plans to meet the next day in Lloydminster, in time for a late afternoon recce.

 

 Click on that picture for a bigger version.  All those little dots are snow geese, thousand of them!  

So it was back north up the highway I went that just the day before I had been traversing with Herb in a southerly direction, which of course had been preceded by our travel in a northerly direction, just a day or so after I had travelled that same road back south from St Paul AB, which of course was only a couple days after I had driven that route north.  I was getting kind of used to the sights along Alberta’s Highway 2…..and honestly there is not a lot to recommend it in terms of scenery.  At any rate, after quite a long drive, I finally arrived in the city of Lloydminster Alberta, crossed the frontier into Lloydminster Saskatchewan, found the Weaver Park Campground where I had stayed in 2011, and got set up.  I caught Frank before he was leaving for his recce, so we arranged to meet at the campground and I would accompany him.

It was good to renew our acquaintance after ten years or so, and we did a fairly through local recce, finding many thousands of birds, primarily snow geese but also mallards, specklebelly geese, and Canada geese.  Frank and his buddy had been out that morning and had gotten into a serious snow-storm.  As in a storm of snow geese!  I forget their tally but it was impressive, and the limit for snow geese is FIFTY per day, with no possession limit!  The extraordinarily large bag limit is because the snow geese numbers have exploded, and these birds are destroying their summer habitat in Northern Canada.  Wildlife managers are attempting to reduce the numbers of snows, but so far without any significant effect.  Now Frank and his buddy had been hunting that morning out of lay-out blinds, also known as coffin blinds, for which reason they are aptly named.  One sets the blind out on a field or similar spot, maybe cams it up a bit with local grass, straw, weeds, etc, and then one climbs into this contraption in basically a position where you are lying on your back with your head somewhat elevated, then you close the folding doors on top of yourself and await the birds.  Oh yes and of course your shotgun, shells, calls, binoculars, thermos, and whatever else your little heart desires all gets tucked in with you, and some folks even bring their dog into the blind with them.  So a well-equipped waterfowl hunter in his or her lay-out blind is kind of like the pharaohs of Egypt, who went to their eternal rest with the good china, enough gold to sink a battleship, and maybe the odd dog and/or slave and/or concubine, all to keep the pharaoh happy in his journey to wherever it was that they went once they got mummified and buried.  Same thing for the waterfowler except for the mummy part, but it is still about as claustrophobic as being wrapped in bandages I am quite certain, not having had THAT experience since Hallowe’en 1975.

So as you may guess I am not a huge fan of lay-out blinds, except for other hunters, may they fill their boots in their little snug hide-outs.  Nope, I strongly prefer to be seated on my pink little bottom on a chair of some type, surrounded by trees or something similar to break my outline.  In this case, when a bird or a flock presents a shot, I merely hoist my gun, take aim, and shoot.  Sometimes I even hit things!  For a geriatric hunter such as myself, entombed in a coffin blind, first of all I can’t SEE diddly squat, so I await the command of the hunt captain to shoot.  Flinging open the doors, my shotgun sometimes ends up where I hope to point it but usually NOT, then I need to find my bearings, figure out where the geese or ducks might be, and (this is the hardest part), SIT UP using just my stomach muscles (both arms being otherwise engaged).  By this time the quarry has decided that the earth opening up at their feet is probably not an all-day duck diner but more likely a TRAP!!!!  And they are back-pedaling furiously, gaining distance and altitude all the time.  So by the time I can actually TAKE an (aimed) shot the birds are generally out of range by the time I waste more money on ammo shooting at disappearing shadows.

Thoughts such as these filled my head when Frank spoke of the lay-out blinds, and I suggested that perhaps we could find an alternative, like a good bit of fencerow or in-field woodline?  Turns out Frank also prefers to forego the sublime comforts of a lay-out blind, and we found a DANDY hole in a wood-line through which ducks and geese were flying.  We decided this would be our morning hunting spot.

 

As it turned out, Frank had been somewhat pressed for time himself that day and he still had his morning’s bag of ducks and geese to clean, seems to me his share was twenty or so birds.  These had been augmented by some cripples we found from that morning’s hunt – all within a small area on the corner of a harvested pea field.  It is noteworthy here that the very first snow goose I ever killed I did so by wringing its neck.  Anywho, Frank had some birds to clean and I know how to do this, so we finished up that little task and decided, it being late and this being Wing Night in a couple local pubs, that a dinner of wings would be just the ticket.  And so it was!  We made our plans for an early morning RV, I got back to my rig and prepared my hunting gear, and all of a sudden it was time to get up for my first ever snow goose hunt.

We went to Frank’s storage unit in town, got the decoys loaded into his truck, and drove to our carefully selected hidey-hole.  There we set up the decoys and a couple chairs, Frank went and hid the truck, and we waited…………..but not for long!  We had flight after flight of specklebelly geese, snow geese, and mallards, sometimes just one or two and other times many thousands, checking us out and sometimes getting close enough to fall victim to our shotguns.  I shot my first ever snow goose, my first ever specklebelly goose, and a few other assorted geese and ducks.  Occasionally, in spite of previous communication, Frank and I would both shoot at a single bird and then it would drop like a stone, hit twice and about simultaneously from two different spots.  The shot of which I was most pleased was a single snow goose coming straight in towards me, which I shot and it folded up like a cheap suitcase, as in DOA.  When I retrieved that bird, I counted my paces – sixty-three paces to the bird, so an honest fifty yards.  For those not familiar with scattergunning, that is a fairly long shot.  But to be candid, my shooting skills are not in the same league as Frank’s.  This guy is a trap and skeet champion, he shoots an over-under Pigeon Grade Winchester 101 as his field gun, and he does not miss very often at all.  So “OUR” bag of birds was primarily due to his shooting, not mine, and all of the calling was done by Frank, who is a virtuoso on the calls.  It is a genuine delight to hunt with somebody who REALLY knows their stuff, and Frank is by far the best waterfowler I ever had the privilege to hunt with.

 

 

 Left is a specklebelly, centre is a bigbelly, right is a snow goose.



 


My new hunting buddy Frank with our mixed bag of birds

The morning had seen fairly brisk northerly breezes and on again/off again snow and sleet, which was a very good thing to keep ducks and geese moving and fairly low.  But it was also a tad chilly and around 1100 when nothing much was flying we called it a hunt.  We gathered up the decoys, our birds, and the gear, and loaded them all into Frank’s F-150 and headed for a swamp where we cleaned the birds.  And imagine my surprise when Frank announced that his harvest from the day before was lots for him, and that I should therefore take all of the meat from this hunt.  THANKS BUD!  Later that afternoon we went out for another recce, finding less birds than the day before, and finally decided that our best bet would be the same hidey-hole as we had enjoyed that morning.  24 hours before we had seen tens of thousands of snow geese; now we saw a few much smaller flocks, and none were on land we had permission to hunt, hence our decision to attempt Round 2.

That night was clear and cold, with the mercury dropping to minus seven or eight, so a mite frosty, and since it was clear we needed to get set up earlier (before daylight).  The first day we had seen many thousands of mallards dropping in to a pond that we could not see, but just at the end of the field we were hunting.  The next morning we hoped to catch a bunch of the mallards on their way into and out of that pond.  That we did.  We had good shooting, especially for mallards, but nothing at all like the day before.  

 

 After we finished the morning hunt and cleaned the birds, we were talking about where the snows had gone.  Three days earlier there were perhaps a hundred thousand snow geese in this general area; now there were very few indeed.  There had been some hunting pressure, including a couple clowns from Indiana whom we had met on our first recce and who surely appeared to be planning on hunting private land without permission.  “Yeah our buddy Dusty Delorme knows the land-owner and we can hunt here.”  (Funny that the land owner had not mentioned this fact to Frank when he obtained hunting permission….)  And the snow and strong north winds of the previous three days had probably encouraged the snow geese to take up and continue migrating south.  Whatever the reason, they were gonzo.

Traffic jam on rural SK highway:

 

That afternoon, I got some chores done – pumped the bilges, did a laundry, had a shower, refuelled the truck, got groceries and other supplies – and had hoped for a bit of a nap.  NOPE!  Out for our last recce, and in spite of putting a LOT of miles on Frank’s truck, we found no big flocks of birds at all.  It seemed our best bet would be to try to get close to a field where some birds were feeding, but where we did not have hunting permission.  There was a neighbour with property close to that spot, and where we could hunt, so that was the plan for Saturday morning’s hunt.  We would be targeting Canada geese and mallards, but would still put up the snow decoys just in case.  That evening Frank and I enjoyed a meal at a local restaurant, their Friday special being prime rib.  And it was delicious!!!

It was another cold night and my camper exterior water froze (no surprise there) but I had been running an electric heater 24 hours a day in the camper itself so inside I had no such issues.  But I had decided that it would be time to move on after Saturday morning’s hunt.  Frank and I enjoyed our last hunt, on a lovely fall morning but few birds flying and so cleaning the birds was not a large chore. 

 

 

Back at the campground we said our goodbyes, “until the next time” and I think both of us felt good about making a new friend with similar interests and values.  It is really amazing when I think of the people I have met, some of whom have become good buddies, all through “meeting” on a firearms website!  If you told me when I was twenty that I would become pen pals with a bunch of people across the country, via COMPUTER!!! I would have told you that you were smoking cheap dope, now here I am…………not just pen pals but hunting and fishing buddies, whodathunkit!

So this was noon on Thanksgiving Saturday, we had experienced snow and below freezing for four days, and I decided it was time to head for home.  That trip will be the subject of my next (and probably last) blog entry for this year.