Rice Field Ducks

Rice Field Ducks Bill Cooper 12/13 I had endured the worst duck season of my waterfowling life. Instantly, the agony vanished as Perry May, owner of IYF Outfitters of Southeast Missouri, turned a sharp corner, breaking away from the cover of a cypress-tupelo river bottom forest. I gasped as a 1,000 acre flooded rice field, teeming with ducks in the southwest corner, broke into view. “I have never seen so many ducks in one location,” chimed hunting partner Aaron Smith of Kirksville, Missouri. “This is a moment I will remember.” “How do we get to those ducks,” I asked. “We are going to check a couple of nearby spots. Those birds will serve as our insurance that ducks will keep piling into the area. Just be patient.” The rich, alluvial soils of the Mississippi River delta supported thousands of square miles of cotton, soybeans, corn and wheat when I grew up there in the 60‘s. However, change loomed on the horizon. A growing number of industrious farmers converted acreage to rice production. According to Frank Nelson, a Missouri Department of Conservation research scientist at the Big River Wetlands Field Station, rice has become a significant contributor to waterfowl habitat in the Bootheel region. “In 1972 there were 4,250 acres of rice in the region. In 2010, the acreage had grown to 241,500 acres,” he said. Flooding harvested rice fields to attract ducks has caught on in the Bootheel, according to Nelson. “Flooding of rice fields and low lying areas along the Mississippi vary each year depending on the weather. Flooded acres, including rice field and natural causes, have varied from 66,000 to 269,000 acres.” “Farmers approach me all the time to lease their flooded rice fields,” May explained. “It is an extra source of income for them and I am able to provide hunting opportunities for waterfowl hunters in Missouri’s middle and south zones as well as Arkansas’s northeast zone.” Flooded rice fields have become increasingly important to migrating ducks as natural wetlands, grasslands and bottomlands have been developed. In dry years, rice fields often supply the majority of fall and winter duck habitat in some areas. Ducks Unlimited and the USA Rice Foundation formed the Stewardship- Partnership in February, 2013, which addresses rice production, waterfowl and conservation. According to USA Rice Chairman Mark Deman, “Rice fields and waterfowl mutually benefit each other, and water is the essential underlying resource for both waterfowl and rice, as well as society as a whole.” “The Bootheel region has a long and rich waterfowling tradition,” May stated. “Ducks have funneled through here for eons, following the Mississippi River. However, as wetlands were drained for farming, fewer acres became available for migrating ducks. Our Missouri Department of Conservation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stepped in and bought up several major waterfowl habitat areas which help hold birds in the region.” Kevin Brunke, the wildlife management biologist at Otter Slough WMA, said that the Missouri Department of Conservation has made great progress in managing the waterfowl areas in the Bootheel. “In years past, managers planted a lot of crops, like corn. We began looking at the entire landscape picture and adjusted our efforts more towards wetlands and water management, so that we could provide nutritious food sources over a longer period of time for migrating waterfowl.” The Missouri Department of Conservation has helped area farmers understand the importance of their farming practices as well, according to Nelson. “Standing rice stubble provides twice as much waste grain for ducks as burned fields,” he said. “Too, water depth of flooded fields of one foot or less provide the best feeding situations for ducks.” “The management improvements of the MDC on those conservation areas, in conjunction with the development of rice farming in the Bootheel, has created a boon for duck hunters,” May concluded. Our hunting party grew antsy after several minutes of listening to hundreds of pintails whistling in the rice. After investigating two other areas near the mass of ducks we had discovered, May selected a pit blind in a flooded rice field, positioned 200 yards from a block of timber. “We’ve got some open water in front of the pit,” he explained. “Once we set the decoys and begin calling, we will catch some of the ducks headed to the southwest corner.” Our five man crew settled into the pit blind at 11:00 a.am. At 11:06 the first flock of ducks responded to May’s calling. On his command to shoot, two pintails tumbled from the sky. Minutes later, a dozen mallards bore down on our decoy set, intent on feeding in the rice stubble. A pair of greenheads folded at the report of our shotguns. For the next two hours our party enjoyed the thrill of picking through hundreds of ducks attempting to take only mallards and pintails. The day ended with limits of pintails, mallards and gadwall. Russ Nanni, of Paducah, Kentucky summed up the day. “I have been duck hunting for a long time. This is a day I will always remember. But, it is often like this when we hunt ducks in the rice!”

Fall - Best Time to Hunt Turkeys

Fall – The Best Time to Hunt Turkeys Bill Cooper “The colors alone make it worth the effort,” my wife Dian, said. She had hunted fall turkeys with me before and she knew what she talked about when she referred to effort. There is no better time to hunt turkeys than in the fall – period. “Fall is the season when all new turkey hunters should begin,” says Ray Eye, the most well known turkey hunter in the sport. “Birds are far more vocal in the fall. Most people will tell you that turkeys are more vocal in the spring, but there are not enough hunters out in the fall to know what is going on. Everyone wants to hear gobbling and males do gobble more in the spring. However, fall is the season of plenty and that is when the turkey population is at its highest. Fall not only gives a new hunter more opportunities to take a turkey, but fall is also the time when a new hunter can best educate himself about turkey vocalizations. The noise can be almost deafening at times. Birds group up in the fall and winter. The noise they make when they fly up and down from the roost is tremendous. All the hens are calling their broods and all the poults are trying to find mom. Flocks run from a few birds up to 300. You get that many turkeys talking at the same time and you have got a lot of noise on your hands.” And turkeys do gobble in the fall. “Turkeys gobble and struggle for position in the pecking order every day,” says Eye. “I have video footage of gobblers strutting and gobbling in July. They were jockeying for position in the pecking order. The better a hunter understands this, the better he can take advantage of it and kill more turkeys.” I hunted with Eye a few falls ago and witnessed an amazing scene. He used gobbler yelps and called aggressively. He worked five adult gobblers into a fighting frenzy. And all five raced to the call to find the new turkey in the woods and put him in his place. One went home with us. The brilliant fall colors along the Current River in Shannon County provided the backdrop for our fall turkey hunt season. Dian and pitched a tent camp far back in the woods not far from the river. We drove out early each morning to a neighboring farm which provided a remote and beautiful setting. We arrived at the farm about 1 pm the first day. Fall turkey hunting is an all day affair, which makes it even more appealing. The land owner had seen a couple of large flocks of birds, giving us an extra sense of confidence. Dian and I first checked out the usual places where we had found turkeys on previous hunts. Primarily, we spent our time walking and glassing the fields and corners. Dian had a new pair of Alpen binoculars which had been given to her by a company rep at a women’s turkey hunt in Arkansas. As a result of owning the fine glasses, Dian became the lead scout. To our surprise, an hour into the hunt, we had not yet found birds. I suggested we start climbing. That brought a frown from her. The Current River hills are steep and rough, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that the turkeys were in the woods. I lead the way up a sharp spur leading to a heavily wooded ridge top which the turkeys liked to frequent. “Besides,” I said, “The climb will allow us to check out the valley on the other side.” Thirty yards up the slope I motioned for Dian to stop. “I just saw a gobbler walk behind a bush in that pocket field 200 yards away. Let’s backtrack, drop into the dry creek and close in on him.” Ten minutes later we were in position to ease up over the creek bank for a look. What we saw caught us off guard. “Turkeys”, Dian whispered. “How many?” I asked. “Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Twelve adult gobblers.” The birds fed into a slight dip giving us a chance to crawl over the lip of the creek bed and make our move. We set our sights on a small cedar tree 75 yards out and in the direction of the turkey flock. One of us crawled while the other kept an eye on the birds. By the time we reached the cedar tree the birds had moved slightly away from us. I gave a few hoarse gobbler yelps and the birds turned towards us almost immediately. Dian and I laid our plans. We hoped for a double. We all know about the greatest laid plans. The birds stopped their advance just out of gun range. Dian wanted to belly crawl a few yards to the right to put her into gun range. I suggested we rush the birds, scatter them and call them back in just like you would do with immature birds. I got a good scatter on the birds with the majority of them going straight up the hill. “I definitely do not want to go after those birds,” Dian said. “OK, let’s head after the three that scattered to our left.” Within five minutes we both settled by a walnut tree in a flat where two dry creek beds came together. We were 75 yards from where we first scattered the flock. Dian and sat 30 yards apart. I waited five minutes and gave three gobbler yelps on my Hunter Specialties mouth call. Immediately, I heard the faint yelp of a gobbler. I raised the bar a bit and became a little more aggressive. Two gobblers responded. The first bird was advancing from straight in front of me and seemed to be coming fast. The other yelped from a spur just above us. The first bird to respond covered ground quickly, but walked through thick, bottomland cover. I would have to shoot him at about 25 yards as soon as he broke from cover. That only took 15 minutes from the time I sat down. A load of 3-inch Winchester number sixes put the bird down cleanly. “Nice bird,” Dian said, but I still think I should have crawled on them. You just didn’t want me to kill the first bird!” “So, what is wrong with that thinking,” I asked. “You’ll find out soon enough,” she quipped. “The brilliant fall colors really do make it worth the effort, doesn’t it baby……….?”

Deer Hunt a River

DEER HUNT A RIVER Bill Cooper Thousands of miles of rivers and waterways course their way across America. Deer commonly utilize these corridors of life. Most rivers and surrounding lands provide all the essentials for a deer to survive: food, water and cover. Few hunters, however, utilize rivers to transport them into some of the finest and most remote deer hunting area available in the nation. A new dimension While there is nothing inherently wrong with hunting river bottoms that are accessed by land, floating or boating up or down a river to access remote areas to deer hunt adds a whole new dimension to deer hunting. I began using both canoes and boats to access remote areas in the Missouri Ozarks after decades of floating a half dozen rivers which took me through expanses of wild country. Sightings of abundant deer trails became the norm as I drifted downstream on any of my favorite rivers. The wilder the country, the more trails I discovered. Utilize maps Regardless of what region of the country you decide to choose for a river hunting expedition, purchase the best maps available of the river you intend to traverse. Most state fish, wildlife and park agencies now have detailed maps of riverways, which show boundary lines for both public and private lands. Experienced deer hunters can look at a good map and pick numerous spots where deer hunting will be exceptional. Look for funnels such as tributary streams, islands, river bottoms, bluff lines, ravines and edges. Find as many of these features as you can on your maps before making your first scouting trip. Maps are a hunting tool and should be used religiously. They will make your deer hunt both enjoyable and more productive. Begin your search for maps on Websites like: www.mytopo.com, www.terraserver.com, and www.usgs.gov. Purchase both a topographical map and an aerial photo and spend much time with them. And never begin a river hunting trip without them. River terrain Rivers run downhill. Therein lies both positives and negatives for deer hunters. For the canoeing deer hunter, the flow of the river provides a power source to move downstream. Maps and scouting trips will help unveil long, slow moving stretches where paddling will be in order. Such stretches can eat up both time and energy to paddle. Know where they are and how much time it will take to cover them. Rivers are classified by difficulty, with a Class 1 rating being the easiest. Know the rating of the river system you intend to hunt. Make at least one trip on your chosen stream well before the hunt date. If you are inexperienced, hire a guide or make the trip with a heavily experienced individual. Obstacles in a river such as boulders, logs, downed trees, sharp turns and drops are real hazards. Know where they exist and learn how to negotiate them. Most rivers have river bottoms or sand or gravel bars, which are great places to pitch a camp. Pick spots that will not leave you stranded or trapped should the weather turn sour. Larger river systems lend themselves to the use of boats, making travel both up and down river possible. This option adds a great deal more flexibility to a deer hunting plan. A popular choice on rocky, shallow rivers is a jetboat, which will run in very shallow water. Where to hunt The possibilities of areas to deer hunt along a river corridor can be mind boggling. Scouting trips will reveal dozens of well worn deer trails coming down river banks. Studying your maps and burning some shoe leather on the ground will narrow your choices. Rivers often serve as a dividing line between between bedding areas, feeding areas and loafing areas. Only time spent observing a trail , or the use of a trail, camera will uncover the movements of deer. In general, the lowlight periods of morning and evening often find deer at waters edge. I often hunt areas along a river that consist of huge blocks of public land. I normally only travel a short distance to find a myriad or trails coming together before narrowing down to the one that crosses the river. Have a plan Trip planning is never more important than when putting a river hunting trip together. Every detail must be covered. Once on the river, it is very difficult to take off the river to get something you forgot. And getting a deer out of rugged terrain can be difficult as well. Go over your plans numerous times. Leave a copy of your plan with several people and have all emergency phone numbers with you. Plan well, scout well and execute well. Your hard work on a river deer hunt will provide the most exciting deer hunting adventure of your life.

Pop Those Bedding Gills

Bill Cooper /13 Pop, went the surface of the pond, as if I smacked my lips loudly. Simultaneously, the leader on my flyline raced perpendicular to my position, slicing through the water like a barracuda. Instead the feisty fish on the business end of my line clearly demonstrated the virtues of the bedding bull bluegill. A colorful, rowdy, but small fish, the bluegill is ounce for ounce, as scrappy as fish come. Most freshwater anglers start out fishing for bluegill. Everyone falls in love with them. They are pure fun and delightful on the dinner plate. Bluegill can be caught all year round. However, the time to catch the most and the biggest bluegill is during the spawn, which occurs in May and June in most areas. Look for the dish pan sized beds in shallow water. Females lay their eggs in the indentations and males hang around to defend the nest. Like a rutting buck, a bull bluegill will attack anything that comes to close. I have fished a lot of places in my lifetime, but one of my favorite methods of fishing is tossing small popping bugs with a lightweight flyrod to bedding bluegill. The action is fast, the fish fight furiously and their is always a good meal at the end of the fishing day. I often use an 81/2-foot Dogwood Canyon 3 or 4 weight flyrod, coupled with a White River fly reel. A floating flyline, tipped with a 4 pound leader is sufficient. Any small, floating bug will catch bedding bluegill. I prefer Betts popping bugs with rubber legs. Bluegill have mouths about the diameter of a lead pencil, so I stick with small bugs. Chartreuse is my favorite color, but white, black, red and yellow, or combinations thereof, will work, too. Legs on most poppers are white and they do their magic. To make the fishing last as long as possible, make accurate casts to the edge of a bedding colony of bluegill. They will strike immediately. I like to work from the outside edge of a bed towards the inside. I catch more fish that way. If you start in the middle, your flyline will spook fish from the beds. Most will return in a matter of minutes, until they tire of your game. Bluegill beds are often found in several locations in a pond or small lake. Find several of and rotate between them. Fish one until the fishing slows and then move on to another. Usually a flyfisherman can make several rounds between the beds before the fishing slows. Normally an angler will have al the fish he wants after two or three rounds. Bull bluegill hook themselves when they inhale a popper. All one needs to do is lift the rod and enjoy the ensuing fight. Gills strike a popper quickly at first. When the action slows, allow the popper to sit for 5 to ten seconds. Then move the popper just enough to make the rubber legs wiggle. And hang on. Hooks are often hard to remove from the tight mouths of bull bluegill. The best popper remover available is a popsicle stick with a small V-notch cut in one end. The stick fights nicely into the fish’s mouth. Hold your line tight, put the V on the hook and apply slight pressure. Your popper will instantly be ready for more action. Cutline: Big, bull bluegill are fun and easy to catch on light flyfishing gear and poppers.

Fall Feeding Spree Creates Superb Smallmouth Fishing

Fall Feeding Spree Creates Superb Smallmouth Fishing Bill Cooper

As late summer wanes into the early stages of fall an itch develops deep in my soul while an insatiable instinct erupts in the smallmouth populations of the Ozarks. Brown bass begin gorging themselves in preparation for winter and slower metabolisms while I dream of catching one more big brown bass. Tom Gallagher, of Sullivan, is a smallmouth fishing guru when the summer time heat fades away to the cooler temperatures of fall. He has been chasing his favorite fish, the smallmouth, on the Meramec River for over 40 years. “There is nothing in the outdoors quite like catching a big, chunky smallmouth bass,” he said. “They are a powerful fish, period. Their long, slender, muscular bodies are perfectly built for the environment in which thy live. And they are the apex predator of the fish world in the Meramec.” “I’d hate to be a crayfish in the Meramec,” Gallagher laughed. He well knows that smallmouth bass feed heavily on crayfish in his beloved Meramec River. Anytime you check the business end of his rods they are rigged with crayfish imitators. A black and blue jig ‘n pig rig is his favorite bait. “Imitates a big crayfish perfectly,” Sullivan said.” I catch more smallmouth on a jig ‘n pig in the cool weather months than on all other of my baits combined.” Gallagher says, with a grand grin on his face, that deer season is the absolute best time to be on the Meramec River for smallmouth. “I generally have the river to myself. Everyone else is deer hunting. However, the river has calmed down, the fish are settled into regular fall patterns. But, the best part of all is the fact that smallmouth are on a feeding binge, making that last big effort to feed up before the really cold weather sets in and slows their metabolism rates.” If you want to give up your deer season to hunt big smallmouth bass, you can find Gallagher on the Meramec River somewhere between Sullivan and Pacific. Dale Goff, of Rolla, lives to catch big smallmouth bass and is quick to state that fall is the magic time of the year. “I catch smallmouth all year long,” he stated without bragging. “Fall is my absolute favorite, though. I catch good fish throughout the summer when their metabolism is very high and the fish are aggressive. But, as fall approaches, the fish can sense the changes that are coming and they go on the feeding spree of the year to get ready for winter. I look forward to that window of opportunity more than any other and I always take time off work so that I can spend several consecutive days on the water.” Goff’s favorite smallmouth bait is a pearl colored Fluke. “Smallmouth hate those things. They attack the bait with a vengeance. It’s like they can’t help themselves. It’s a reaction bite. The Fluke drifts downward with a dying minnow action that a smallmouth bass cannot ignore.” I made a trip recently with Goff. I paddled the canoe and photographed his catch. I have never seen so many three and four pound smallmouth bass caught on one trip in the Missouri Ozarks. He caught every fish on his beloved pearl colored Fluke. Goff spends most of his smallmouth fishing time on the habitat rich Gasconade and its tributaries. Corey Cottrell, of Huzzah Valley, is one of the best known smallmouth fishermen in the state. Cotrell grew up on the banks of the Huzzah and fishes it regularly, as well as the Courtois and Meramec. Cottrell has never failed to astound me with the shear numbers of smallmouth he catches on every trip we make. He stays “in the zone.” Cotrell agrees with the two aforementioned smallmouth gurus that the fall feeding spree is one of the best times to chase big smallmouth. “I generally head to bigger water when fall arrives,” Cottrell began. “However there is one stretch of the Meramec I like to fish in the fall that is still small water. The stretch of trophy trout water from Highway 8 to the Maramec Spring Branch really gets hot this time of year.” Cotrell fishes the stretch with a Sammy 65 in chartreuse/shad or American shad colors. On the bigger waters of the Meramec, from Steelville to Stanton, Cottrell throws the bigger Sammy, number 100, in the same colors. “Topwater action can be tremendous in fall,” he stated. “Another bait I like to use is a frog bait, either in the buzzbait style or the regular frog with wiggly legs.” Cottrell sticks with topwater baits until November.”Smallmouth turn onto crayfish big time as the temperatures begin to cool,” Cottrell explained. “That is when I turn to crankbaits in crawfish patterns. I like the Storm Wigglewart and Bomber’s crayfish crankbaits. I use them up into December.” Anytime the water gets high and muddy Cottrell switches to a white spinnerbait. “White spinnerbaits are killer baits in December and January around the spring holes.” Cottrell stays on the water all winter. “When the water temperature drops below 48 degrees, I break out the jerkbaits. The Pointer 98 is my favorite.” Cottrell knows the Huzzah, his home stream like no one else. “Going into the fall feeding spree, I use the same baits which I use on the Meramec. I also use a 4-inch Senko in green pumpkin or watermelon. For the deeper water I add a 1/8 ounce jighead.” I would trust my smallmouth fishing life to these three gentlemen. In fact, most of the big smallmouth I have caught in my life I can credit to one of these guys. My next move is to coax one , or all three of them, to take me smallmouth fishing during the fall feeding spree.

Late Duck Season Made Up for Poor Season Bill Cooper 2/2/13 Another duck season has come and gone. It will go down in the annals of my duck hunting memory as one of the worst and best duck seasons I have ever had in my forty years of duck hunting. Duck hunter hopes started high late last summer as reports poured in from teh Northern breeding grounds. Ducks numbers were the highest they had ever been since records were first kept in 1952. I, along with thousands of other duck hunters, was elated with teh notion of millions of ducks coming down teh flyways. I made my preparations early, so that I would be ultra-prepared when the duck season rolled around in November. I cleaned my shotgun again, bought a new choke for it, as well as a case of high dollar loads that were sure to blast ducks out of the sky. I tuned my bot motor, cleaned the boat from stem to stern, touched up the camo paint, and purchased new batteries. I also picked up 4 dozen new decoys, brightly colored canvasbacks and lifelike bluebills. Combined with the decoys I already had, I felt convinced I could fool any duck that came my way. Full of anticipation, I checked my decoy set one more time as I settled in for my first morning of duck hunting during the 2012 season. The decoys bobbed it the slight chop created by a northwest wind. My cell phone clock indicated that shooting hours would start in one hour. I star gazed to pass the early morning time. The North star shined brighter than ever. A falling star burned its way into the earth’s atmosphere, only to fade out almost as fast as it had entered. I fully expected to hear the whistling wings of thousands of ducks well before first light. It didn’t happen. Shooting hours came and went. No ducks. None. I always killed ducks at my spot. My heart sank along with my confidence in the reports of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Five trips later, I had harvested a grand total of two ducks. Normally I would have had a couple dozen ducks from five trips. The expected grand migration simply did not happen at my duck hunting spot. A few phone calls to other duck hunters and some browsing on the web gave me answers. The weather had been unseasonably warm and ducks were in a major holding pattern along the U.S. and Canada border. And when temperatures did drop enough to push ducks down the flyway, most ducks migrated through Missouri in a few major flight days. That is the days with bluebird skies and a nice tailwind. They didn’t stop for long and continued south, as if to make up for time lost loitering up North. Duck season came and went and I took a total of two ducks for the entire season, my worst total on record. Not to be outdone by ducks, I began researching other possibilities. The South zone of Missouri stayed open until January 20 for duck season. I hit the Web again and soon came up with a promising outfitter in southeast Missouri called IYF (In Your Face) Outfitters. That sounded like my kind of operation. I contacted owner Perry May. We quickly hit it off and set a date for me to arrive. The night I drove down, a snow storm put the damper on my hopes. I battled road conditions for the last 50 miles of the trip, trying to stay on the highway. The comforts of IYF Lodge were a wonderful sight. I spent the evening lamenting my duck hunting luck with May and other hunters at the lodge. “We will change your luck tomorrow,” May announced with a convincing grin. Smells of bacon and coffee wafted through the lodge early the next morning. Breakfast was ready. I panicked when I looked at my watch. It was 6:30 a.m. We should have been in blinds already. Not so, according to May. “A lot of water froze last night,” he stated. “Things will be different today. We will give it some time to warm up. We will leave here at 9 a.m. sharp.” I knew I was in for something different, but wasn’t sure I was going to like it. After a 45 minute drive to the hunting area, I had begun not to like the situation. We had wasted precious time. As we approached flooded rice fields, I could see ducks in every direction. I knew we should have been there earlier. May stopped the truck and broke a pair of binoculars. He studied intently while each hunter made their recommendations know about which way we should go. May insisted that we be patient. “I don’t want to make a hasty decision,” he quipped. “Let’s look a couple more spots.” An hour later May made an announcement. “We are going to the west pit blind. There is a pocket of open water in front of it and the birds will work it once we get our decoys out.” All four of us hunters could see dark clouds, that means thousands, of ducks going down in a flooded rice field 400 yards away. Why weren’t we going there? May delivered us and all our gear to the blind with a Ranger, slipping and sliding in the slim, black mud of the rice field. May hid the Ranger, threw out a couple dozen decoys and announced that every one should get ready. I had my doubts. May blew his duck call to the tune of: ‘ya’ll come over here’. In less than five minutes minutes, a flight of green head mallards locked their wings and pitched in, loosing altitude fast. “Shoot ‘em,” May shouted. Birds tumbled at the report of shotguns. “Boom,” May shouted. His black Lab bounded through the ice slush and retrieved teh first ducks of the day. “Did ya get all that on film, Bill ?”, May asked. “Yep, I did,” I replied. I had greed to film the entire first day of the hunt. I soon thought I had made a mistake as I watched flight after flight of pintails and mallards into the decoys. However, I made up for it over the next two most fabulous days of my duck hunting life waterfowling with IYF Outfitters of Southeast Missouri. Perry May is now booking for snow goose hunts. The birds have poured into the rice fields by the tens of thousands. Contact May at: perry@iyfoutfitters.com or call 573-421-0093.

Snow Goose Hunt of a Lifetime Bill Cooper 3/13 “I experienced a snow goose hunt of a lifetime,” Chad Everitt, of Lebanon, Ohio, began. “I have never seen as many snow geese as I saw in southeast Missouri recently.” Everitt and two of his Ohio hunting buddies, Chad Dwire and Jim Girtin, traveled 9 hours to hook up with Perry May, owner and operator of IYF Outfitters of Dexter. I joinerd teh goose hunting trio fro two days of their three day hunt. “We have to be where the geese want to be,” Perry May stated to us after our arrival to IYF Lodge on Friday evening. “ My operation is right in the middle on one of the major flight patterns of snow geese coming out of Arkansas coming into Missouri. They have moving by the thousands every day for the last two weeks.” May had been sending me phone videos almost every day for the week prior to my arrival. The numbers of white geese his videos showed were incredible. I, too, had never seen those numbers of snow geese in one area. To say our hunting party chomped at the bit to get started proved a serious understatement. The Conservation Order had come into effect and all of us shared visions of nonstop shooting and piles of snow geese. Fitful sleep haunted all of us, but smells of aromatic coffee stirred our olfactory lobes early the next morning and the caffeine settled frazzles nerves. May explained that we would be in no hurry. “Ours is really an early afternoon spot,” he confided. We will head to teh spot and make any necessary changes in the decoy set. During the process you will see thousands upon thousands of blues and snows headed out to feed. Enjoy the sight and rest assured they will return in about two hours.” We all had a difficult time comprehending what we were seeing as we stopped at the edge of a cut soybean field. Skein after skein of hungry birds winged north overhead. We lingered. “Load up,” May barked, after unloading his Ranger. “You will have plenty of time to scan the skies as we get our work done.” As soon as May pulled alongside his massive spread of decoys, perhaps a thousand, or more, he pointed in several directions and instructed us to pull the decoys in tighter. “The birds are in an aggressive feeding mode at right now and we want to imitate that scenario. With our motion decoys we will imitate birds feeding and leapfrogging to the front of the flock just the way birds naturally feed across a field. We all pitched in to create the desired effect with the decoy spread, while May issued instructions about fine tuning individual areas of the spread. He often reminded us that the less time we spent craning our necks skyward, the sooner we would complete the task at hand and could then climb into the well camoed layout blinds he had precisely positioned for each of us. We all chatted incessantly as we stashed our gear in our respective blinds. May had instilled within each of us a confidence that he knew what he was doing. However, we all wanted to see hard evidence. Birds milled in all directions as we placed final touches of soybean stalks on blinds to cover up any bare spots. Mays fanatical flare for detail spoke of his extensive experience at hunting snow geese. I lay in my layout blind and realized how fortunate I was to be in such a part of such a spectacular event. I have enjoyed many types of hunts in my six decades of life, but I had never witnessed anything quite that spectacular. We all voiced our hopes that thousands of snow geese would descend upon us. Tens of thousands birds flew over us. May turned on his e-callers as the North wind picked up. The wind breathed life into the thousand deke spread. The set looked very convincing to me. I could only wonder what the real McCoys thought. The answer to my thoughts came quickly. A pair of snows peeled from a large skein of high flyers and lost altitude quickly. Chad Dwire nailed the first single that banked and soared into the set. Congratulations echoed as Boom, Mays’ incredible one-year-old black Lab raced to the downed bird and retrieved it to hand. The tone for the day had been set. A lone blue goose swung low to the right and Jim Girton flipped it with the first shot from his new shotgun, a great way to baptize a new goose gun. Singles, pairs and occasional small groups teased us relentlessly as they banked, careened and turned to check out the spread. I secretly wondered if all the shooters gripped their shotguns as tightly as I gripped my video camera each time a goose came near our effective shooting range. The continual sight of such wild, beautiful creatures dropping hundreds of feet from bright, blue skies to investigate kept hearts pumping. Dwire dropped a blue that snuck in with one clean shot. A short lull in the action followed and May announced that we would make a change in the set again. “Thin ‘em out,” he instructed. “The aggressive feed is over. Move some the decoys out beyond teh current edges of the set. Create small family groups.” Mays call worked like a charm and the shooting action picked up again. The Ohio boys laughed and goaded one another as some geese dropped at the reports of their shotguns, while others escaped unscathed. They clearly enjoyed the snow goose hunt of their life as unbelievable numbers of snows and blues kept coming and coming and coming our direction. I kept hearing them mumble, “This is so unreal. Never seen anything close to these numbers of snows.” The three Ohio boys party and another of May’s groups, just three miles away, harvested over 80 blues and snows. And, they were well on their way to repeating the feat when I left them early the next afternoon. I scratched my head on the long drive home, pondering how to best tell the almost unbelievable story of what I had experienced. My best idea...call Perry May at 573-421-0093 or e-mail him at: perry@iyfoutfitters.com. He can paint a better picture of what to expect.