USA: Conservation Goose Hunt NY 2024

[BeeMaa]

It’s that time of year again…time for Canada goose hunting with my friend IGS! First, a quick pic from opening day of last season. Always good to start off a year with a reminder of the last one. It's also a reminder to me that I did a horrible job last year of taking pictures of any real value. A good writer knows that a picture is worth...well you get the point. And I'll do better this year.

 

[BeeMaa]

To recap for those that haven’t read one of my previous reports on Canada goose in NY. For those that have, skip down to the next paragraph.

This is a conservation goose season from the 1st to the 25th of September. Bag limit is 15 Canada goose/person/day in the areas we will be hunting. The reason for the high limit is to reduce the number of Canada geese that are non-migratory (resident) because they consume the resources that the migratory geese are trying to eat. During migratory season (starts toward the end of October) the limits range from 3 to 5 geese/person/day depending on the area you are hunting. In short, take (all) the geese that won’t leave and take it easy on the migratory ones.

It doesn’t feel like it, but this will be my third year doing conservation goose season with IGS. The first year was not too bad, but I missed opening day and that’s the one day that CAN’T be missed. 2023 was much better and we downed more geese than I’ve ever done before. That said, we still learned a lot and will apply those lessons to this season.

Another good thing is making friends with like-minded sportsmen who live in the area. In total there are about six, plus IGS and me…a good-sized group without being too big. The best part is that these guys are experienced hunters. That means they have their own gear, know how to call geese, can actually down birds and most of all…are courteous and ethical hunters.

 

[BeeMaa]

Right now, I’m packing and making final arrangements. Laying gear out, spraying clothing with permethrin and seeing if there is anything else we need before I head out. IGS has been scouting the area and doing his own prep work to get things ready.

BTW – The amount of prep he’s been doing is at the guide level. I’ve been texting and talking to him for the past few weeks and the list of things he’s sorting out is incredible. Mudding in blinds, daily scouting for geese, prepping the float boat & kayak, checking blinds, visiting people whose land we will be hunting on…etc. What a great friend to have. This probably deserves a nice bottle of bourbon. Here are a few pics of him scouting for geese while fishing the river this morning.

 

[BeeMaa]

Stuff I’m doing is only what I can from 350 miles away. Pretty much making sure I have everything. Waders, boots, shotgun, shells (TSS of course) and just about every other piece of kit I could find in the bin marked “goose”. LOL. I believe the only new piece of kit is a game strap from Dive Bomb because I couldn’t hold more than four geese in each hand…and there were still more floating that I needed to grab! Still haven't found a good way to take a picture of all the crap I'm loading up, but I'll try to do something about it.

Ear pro…I forgot to mention this. Last year I brought the Tetra Multi-Pursuit Custom Shield along with some regular (non-electronic) custom plugs. Good thing I had backup, the Tetra’s died because I failed to change the batteries before I left. Currently I’m debating on whether to take them or not. This past turkey season I used a set of Sordin Supreme Pro-X and really liked them. I’ve also used them at the skeet range several times…not sure the Tetra’s will make the trip, but we shall see. The regular plugs are always present.

 

[Red Leg]

Jeez, is he using an anchor rope for a stringer?!? Yankees .......

 

[BeeMaa]

If I don’t do it now, I won’t get around to doing it at all. Not sure how useful this will be but here is a picture of what is currently ready to go. I will also say that I haven’t gone through my list 100% and I’m certainly missing more than a couple items…but nothing major. At the same time, some of this will not make the trip. Still sorting things out. I have about 24 hours to procrastinate, then it’s two hours to pack. LOL.

 

[BeeMaa]

Jeez, is he using an anchor rope for a stringer?!? Yankees .......

LOL.

Said he couldn't keep the lure in the water without something hitting it. No rain for the past few days and reduced water levels mean clear water in the river and the fish have concentrated in the deeper pools. Easy fishing for those in the know. Said he caught over 100 fish in just a couple of hours, not to mention the more than 20 flights of geese that flew directly over his head! Let's not forget the real reason he was out there...scouting.

 

[BeeMaa]

31 AUG 2024

I'll keep it short.

I drove up, we rigged gear most of the day. Had a good dinner and got mentally prepared for opening day.

 

[Altitude sickness]

This gets me excited for my 26-29th grouse, woodcock hunt

 

[BeeMaa]

1 SEP 2024

I didn’t sleep much. Awake a 2am thinking about goose, just getting psyched and happy that at my age I still am. Trying not to forget stuff, should I really take this or that…just all up in my head.

Somehow, I fall back asleep but woken up by my alarm…what feels like way too early. Coffee, final pack and we are on the road. The plan is to use two kayaks with panels from blinds to make hides in the river along the rocks.

We drop in and the water level is a little lower than optimum. IGS has a low draft 3-section NRS kayak and I’m using a borrowed self-bailing plastic one. The cloud cover is making it hard to see the riffles in the river making navigation even more difficult. We float & row about 2 miles to the spot we have selected and split up to assemble our blinds. IGS is in the middle of the river behind a rock while I find a nice spot on the bank.

Shooting light is 5:50 and we didn’t get set up until after 6, but the scouting that IGS has done shows that there’s nothing flying until 6:30. We are all set and 6:30 come…and goes. No geese. 6:40…no geese. I get a text from IGS saying that they will show up. I’m not worried at all even if they don’t, I’m at total peace just watching the water flow and sunrise. What a beautiful sight.

 

[BeeMaa]

Remember those blinds we assembled on top of our kayaks? Yeah, that wasn’t the best idea. Turns out we need the kayaks to recover the birds. What ensues is a melee as the two of us toss our blind materials on the rocks and are running between rocks and birds…all the while, strings after string of geese are flying overhead.

Making things difficult are that when recovering geese, the ones that are flying SEE you and veer off…just out of gun range. We improvise, adapt and overcome. Switching positions, grabbing each other’s gear and floating downstream at the same time.

The flights continue to come, wave after wave of geese are flying over us. It’ an incredible sight that I’ve never experienced before. The kayaks are filling up with the day’s harvest while IGS and I are slowly running out of steam.

We end up about 150 yards downstream behind a bunch of deadfall in the middle of the river. Both of us are overheating from the activity and in need of a break. After a little bit of a rest, IGS snaps a picture of the disarray.

 

[BeeMaa]

Neither one of us are sure how many birds we have, but with a limit of 15 each are confident that we are below that. What we do know it that at least 250 birds flew overhead in less than two hours, most of them were out of range…but obviously some were not. It was an amazing experience to see so many birds and frustrating that we didn’t get a chance at those really high ones.

We call it good and head downstream to find a place to take proper pics and clean the birds. The total is 17.

 

[BeeMaa]

We talk and reminisce about the hunt we just experienced. How IGS was on the right bank and about 50 yard downstream from when as a flight approached. He only shot once, the bird falling stone dead from the sky. The rest of the flight turn towards the middle of the river, directly at me. I shoot once and another stone-dead bird. Another time, we shot almost simultaneously…dropping two birds at the same time. Turns out, those two birds we shot at the same time were both banded. We collected three total bands today. The “together birds” were banded within 15 miles of where they were shot and just a year old. The other one more than 5 years old and banded in Ontario, Canada. The bird on the right of the photo is the Canadian big boy.

 

[BeeMaa]

Following all this we are both more than alittle drained. It’s decided that we will forgo the evening hunt in favor of cleaning & resetting the gear, hydration, caloric intake and possibly a sample of that bottle of bourbon I brought.

As late afternoon approaches, the hard stuff is done and all we really have left is cleaning the shotguns. Seems IGS’s shotgun took a little dip in the river…feels wicked gritty. We both strip down our firearms and get them back up to par.

As we finish up, a few of our goose hunting friends stop by the house. Unfortunately, they didn’t enjoy the same success we did. They heard geese and heard shooting, but it just didn’t happen for them. That’s hunting sometimes. We exchanged information and possible hunting options for them both this evening and tomorrow.

It’s been a hell of an opening day. I’m both very impressed with how well we did as a team and disappointed that I personally could have done better. It would have been really nice to hit our limit of 30 birds in one day. Hope springs eternal in a hunter’s heart and tomorrow is another day.

I can’t wait…

 

[Hogpatrol]

Thanks for the update. That bag isn't anything to sneeze at.

 

[Tra3]

Awesome! That sounds like way more fun than I had today. Looks like a really successful start to the 2024 hunting season.

I appreciate the gear photo. It reminds me that I sat close to outdoor writer Ron Spomer on a flight to Namibia. I suggested that an interesting article would be to take photos of the items he packs for specific hunts. I’ve always been curious by what people carry with them. It helps me to see what items other more experienced hunters bring (and don’t bring!)
I give you two thumbs up for the dried mango and peanut m&m’s in your kit!

Did the TSS perform to expectations this year?

 

[BeeMaa]

Awesome! That sounds like way more fun than I had today. Looks like a really successful start to the 2024 hunting season.

I appreciate the gear photo. It reminds me that I sat close to outdoor writer Ron Spomer on a flight to Namibia. I suggested that an interesting article would be to take photos of the items he packs for specific hunts. I’ve always been curious by what people carry with them. It helps me to see what items other more experienced hunters bring (and don’t bring!)
I give you two thumbs up for the dried mango and peanut m&m’s in your kit!

Did the TSS perform to expectations this year?

I would say that the right gear is important and goose hunting has a lot to do with debris mitigation. Keeping water out of your shotgun, ammo and the other gear you brought probably being the biggest one. I did have to buy another waterproof bag to carry my "kill kit" and food. Nothing fancy, just a 13L dry bag from Sea to Summit. By the end of the day, I knew it was a good purchase.

I'll go over some of the things things that worked well and where I may have overpacked. For now it looks like I'm close to the sweet spot considering the expected weather.

TSS...aaaah yes. The forever debate of cost vs lethality. I'll say that we shot more shells than I expected. Of the birds recovered, only three required a finishing shot. Most of the ones we hit were falling hard. Most notably, there was one that IGS shot that landed on a flat rock with the loudest of thumps. Several more landed in the wood, again there was just a loud THUD. We did recover some cripples that floated down the river to us as all efforts were made to recover every bird.

In truth, everyone knows the answer...we will never know if there would have been a difference if we had been using steel, bismith, Hevi-Shot...etc. What I do know is that at the heights we were shooting at, we had some incredible results. I would say it's a testament to the longer range capability of TSS vs other shells. I've shot high birds with other shot and it did not have near the results that we got yesterday. I'm still firmly in the TSS camp, and others are free to make their own choices.

 

[Altitude sickness]

That was a more challenging and interesting hunt than what we do. Laying in wheat stubble

 

[BourbonTrail]

Good luck and Get some!

 

[HankBuck]

We talk and reminisce about the hunt we just experienced. How IGS was on the right bank and about 50 yard downstream from when as a flight approached. He only shot once, the bird falling stone dead from the sky. The rest of the flight turn towards the middle of the river, directly at me. I shoot once and another stone-dead bird. Another time, we shot almost simultaneously…dropping two birds at the same time. Turns out, those two birds we shot at the same time were both banded. We collected three total bands today. The “together birds” were banded within 15 miles of where they were shot and just a year old. The other one more than 5 years old and banded in Ontario, Canada. The bird on the right of the photo is the Canadian big boy.
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@BeeMaa - nice photo and I was going to ask how many geese you shoot are “Banded”? When I hunted September Geese in NJ a higher percentage of geese were banded vs the regular season - roughly 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 vs the 1 in 50+ the rest of the year…also most were banded in NY - with Long Island & Ontario being the frequent origin. Nice size on that 5 year old bird ! I think they grow for at least 2-3 years and the Big ones like that would weigh 13-14 lbs (Eat hearty !!)….looks like a nice hunt