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.
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.
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