We only have so many "one days" allotted to us. She may be wasting hers. Every dog is different so there's never any concern about comparisons. She will get wrapped up in raising a new pup and adapting to its individual personality.
Tons of them in my flyaway. I shot a couple last week. They are fun to watch dropping to the decoys. Often they will do a complete barrel roll in midair. Looks like they are playing tag with each other.
That’s fun to watch, I’ve seen the lesser Canada’s, snow geese and even sandhill cranes do that waffling in. When I was in north California back in the late 90’s while duck hunting we were covered up with cacklers and Aleutian Canada’s but at that time Humbolt county was closed to goose hunting because at the time the Aleutians were protected. Now they have a nuisance season for them but my buddy has left the area. The cacklers, Aleutian, dusky and western canadas are the only birds in the only ones in the Canada/cackler complex I don’t have.
Cacklers are lessers. The name lesser Canada was dropped a long time ago. And then there are little Richardson's geese, also honker mimics but about the size of a mallard. Both cackling geese and Richardsons are not even in the same family tree as Canada geese (honkers). They are Brandt geese if I remember correctly. So how did some birds in the same family as snow geese wind up looking like big honkers? Not inbreeding. This is evolutionary mimicry in action. These geese evolved to resemble honkers as a defense mechanism. Honkers are simply too big for birds of prey to bring down (somewhere there's a YouTube video of a young falcon foolish enough to try taking a honker ... it had a wild ride for quite a while). So these little geese evolved to look like birds two or three times their actual size. In midair a hawk has no perspective to judge size, especially if cacklers are flying with their own kind or with snow geese of same size (which is very common). So it leaves them alone.
Have you shot a giant Canada? When I first started hunting it was thought they were extinct. Then a small nonmigratory flock was discovered on a bird refuge in the Midwest (Iowa I think?). From those birds a migratory population was developed. I don't know for certain but I suspect it was done by stealing their eggs and planting them in the nest of other still migratory subspecies Canada geese. I send in my wing surveys every year and the last two years they confirmed one giant Canada each year. I am sure I've shot two more this year. The three primary wing feather tips barely fit in the envelope!
Proper guns and proper dogs. Well done.
About 90% of the resident geese in the south are giant Canadas, they weigh on avg about 12 pounds and one exceptionally big gander I shot on Eufaula NWR weighed in at 17 pounds and was 11 years old according to the band return. They are so thick they are a nuisance with our season basically sept- October and then December and January.
Typically you see a conservation season early (September time frame) with bag limits of 15 geese per day to reduce the number of resident geese. Later in the season (December to January) the limits are reduced to limit the number of migratory geese taken. Sometimes these limits are as few as one.
About 6 hours west of you on the Arkansas/Mississippi border are all kinds of outfitters that are in the Mississippi fly-away zone for some prime goose & duck.
