| Texas Goose Hunt, Part One | |
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When a fellow in the Hunting and Shooting Forum going by the name of Gonzo invited me to Texas to hunt geese, I confess I had a doubt or two. After all, that's a long trip for an unsure thing... and there was mention of getting out of bed at midnight and lying in the mud in the cold rain, none of which sounded appealing. Still, I was hooked. I'd already ruled out the SHOT Show, not wanting to fight Superbowl crowds in Las Vegas, so why not take a trip to Texas?
The first thing I needed was a partner in this enterprise. Driving for sixteen hours straight is not something to engage in lightly, so I needed someone to share the ride with... not to mention sharing the experience. Who better than Dad? I asked him to come along, and he agreed to make the trip, though he seemed a bit hesitant.
I went to Mapquest for driving directions, and was told that the 920-mile trip would take sixteen hours. Dad said that meant it'd be more like twenty. I doubted that, but figured we'd be better off early than late. So, we pulled out of my place at around 11 AM Thursday. Sixteen hours later, we were sitting in front of Gonzo's house... that's 3 AM, or 2 AM his time, in Friday. So much for Dad's calculations!
We didn't want to just stroll up and knock on his door -- I mean, I wouldn't want anyone pounding on my door in the middle of the night. We hung around for a while, sitting in the truck talking and burning cigars, then we headed to IHOP and ate some breakfast. We returned and tried to catch a few Zs in the truck, but all I got was sore - Dad really needs reclining bucket seats. Finally, sometime after 6 AM, I spotted some movement in the house, so I walked on up and met the one and only Gonzo!
We got along like old friends immediately. After some coffee and conversation, Dad and I hit the sack while Gonzo went to work for a couple of hours. We got about two hours of sleep, then the rest of Friday was spent running around getting licenses and ammo.
I'd brought along two shotguns, with the idea that Dad could shoot my Mossberg 9200 auto while I used the Remington 11-87. He wanted to use his own gun but didn't like the idea of shooting steel through his old Browning Superposed, so we hunted him up some Bismuth shells, at the third shop we tried. Holy cow -- the three-inch magnums cost $21.97 plus tax for a box of ten! Dad picked up two boxes of Bismuth shells at that outrageous price. Heck, I'm still complaining about paying $15 for a box of twenty-five three-inch steel-shot Remingtons -- but Dad really got hosed.
We headed back to Gonzo's house, where we ate a portion of the HUGE pot of Gonzo Gumbo and spent the evening talking. I finally sacked out around 10 PM -- Dad showed more sense than I, and was in bed by 7:30.
I'd only just laid down in bed, when I was woken up at 12 AM! Gonzo's buddy Beno (pronounced "bean-oh") wanted us at his house by 1 AM. Man oh man, Gonzo wasn't kidding about that stuff. We got there, met Beno, loaded our gear into his Suburban and headed out. Lots of clouds and fog, and the weather was cool -- things were looking good for goose hunting. We were gonna slaughter 'em!
After arriving
at the property, and finding our way to the chosen field, we all piled onto
the four-wheeler and trailer with the decoys, guns, sleds, and everything, and
headed out into the field. By then it was about 4 AM. I'm supposed to be curled
up in bed at this time of day, and instead I'm out there, bouncing through a
muddy and pockmarked field in a trailer that bangs pathetically with every bump,
behind a four-wheeler occupied by Dad and Beno. What am I, nuts?
Our fearless leader Beno carefully and meticulously picked the muddiest spot in the field for us to set up in, and we spent two hours setting up decoys. Windsocks first, then shells, Beno placing them while Gonzo and I fetched them back and forth. Beno's friend Coach is running late, and when he finally shows up we hurry to add his decoys to the spread.
With every step, my boots got heavier, and I soon learned to despise East Texas mud. It's almost as slick as Georgia clay, but much clingier. By the time I lie down to hunt, I was carrying at least five extra pounds on each foot. The fact that you couldn't find a square foot of ground without a deep hoofprint from the cattle didn't help things much.
I learned that Gonzo wasn't kidding when he said you have to lie in the mud, either! Thankfully, Coach had brought an extra "sled," which is a plastic do-lolly designed to keep hunters out of the mud. Yeeehaw, now Dad and I both get to lie motionless in undersized plastic trays! Well, it sure beats lying in the mud, anyhow.
Coach and Gonzo headed back out of the field with the four-wheelers. Beno and I helped Dad into his sled, then I got settled in mine.
Dad spotted them first... it was just breaking day, and Coach and Gonzo, I'd later learn, were sipping coffee back at the truck. A group of five or six geese coming in close. Beno was still standing up, fiddling with his stuff, when I said something to him. He frantically grabbed his gun, loaded it, and hunkered down. The birds came back over again, and Beno gave us our directions: "Not yet... not yet... don't move... don't move... let 'em come... don't move... don't move... take 'em!"
I'd been lying there, waiting for the word from Beno, tracking the leftmost goose with my shotgun. When he said to take 'em, I took 'em. One of them, anyhow. I held on his nose and down he came. The great Beno missed his bird, but my first shot at a goose had dropped one. Nothing to it! I was so tickled and keyed up that I didn't even think to shoot again. Wasn't it going to be like this all day? There'd be plenty more opportunities, right? Gonzo and Coach came strolling up a little later, and everyone got settled in.
I got one more shot Saturday, and dropped that bird, too. We came away with a total of four birds, between five hunters. Dad didn't even fire a shot, not even at the lone Canada goose that we told him was his and his alone. There was something about our setup the geese didn't like, and they spent a lot of time acting like they were coming in, then they'd flare at the last minute. It may have had something to do with the oversized bed Coach was using to lie on, I don't know.
We watched helplessly as flight after flight of geese landed in field seventy-eight, until it was paved with white. We were in field seventy-seven. Soon, no geese would give our measly spread a second look -- they headed straight to the other field, which was just full of geese.
On
Sunday, this is what part of field seventy-seven looked
like. No photograph can capture the effect of thousands
of geese that close at hand, though - the picture makes
them look farther away than they are, kind of like those
dumb rear-view mirrors on the right-hand side of cars.
When the cold front came roaring out of the northwest like a freight train, we started gathering our gear and decoys. It started raining, the temperature dropped at least fifteen degrees, and the wind was howling across that open field. It was pretty miserable, but we finally got done chasing down and packing up the windswept decoys, got back to the truck and got warm.
Gonzo had a birthday party to attend that afternoon, so when we got back to his place Dad and I cleaned the geese, put them on ice, got cleaned up and hit the sack. When he was done cooking the barbecued chicken that evening, he woke us up to see if we were hungry, but we were far more tired than hungry. I guess I got about six hours of sleep altogether. We did have some of the BBQ chicken for breakfast, and it was excellent.
Page Two > Day Two and the Geese it held
- Russ Chastain
