First Blood of the Season!

Fall is officially here! Cold mornings, dew on the truck, and hot chocolate and an apple fritter for breakfast has confirmed it. We brought in the new season in style over labor day weekend with some early season goose action. Utah doesn't have an early goose season, but a few of the neighboring states do. I got an invite from a good buddy so Friday morning I bailed on work early and headed up. I forgot my good camera again so all my pictures are off my phone, so I apologize for the poor quality.

I made it up there and within 30 minutes this was our view:

It turns out where we were staying was right on the golf course. The golf was great and the scenery was absolutely stellar. This helped to pass some time, we were all getting pretty goosey. Bird fever had arrived.










That evening we drove out to where we'd be shooting the next morning to find a few hundred geese hanging out. They were coming in smaller bunches and didn't even circle, things were looking good. We spent the next hour or so waiting on the pharmacy for one of the gang to get a prescription filled to boost his testosterone. Haha, I guess he has some defeciency where his body doesn't produce enough, so we got a lot of good laughs out of that. He is a yBu fan, what can you expect?

The next morning we woke up at 3:00 AM to get the spread set-up. I never have hunted over more than 4 dozen decoys or so, but we put out probably 10 dozen? It was a lot of work but we had a sweet looking spread! We got set up just in time to watch the sunrise come up over the mountains.

The mornings hunt was quick. The geese moved just as expected and we killed 9 of our 10 bird limit out of the first flock. They came in picture perfect. We left after the first bunch came in because we'd be hunting the same field later in the trip and didn't want to educate anymore birds. We went back and played some more golf and then crashed.



Day two came with the same schedule and set-up, although we moved to  opposite ends of the field. Later that evening one of the guys went out and killed 1 more bird to fill our limits. Most the geese were moving on the opposite end of the field, so we sat there the next morning. We had another gorgeous set-up. The birds didn't move until a little bit later so we got to watch the fog burn off, it was beautiful.

This hunt reminded us why they call it hunting and not killing. We didn't ever fire our guns, but that was fine. I got to be with some new friends, see a couple dads interact with their young sons, the fact that we didn't shoot anything was a let down, but definitely not a trip ruiner. For some reason all the birds went to an entirely different area. Despite our 10 dozen decoys and who knows how much money invested in goose calls we couldn't pull any in close enough.

That night we wrapped things up with ribeyes and goose breasts on the grill. We exchanged some great hunting stories and filled up on man food. It was a great way to end the trip.

 


























It was a great trip, big thanks for those that set-up and extended the invite. It's hard to take people you don't know real great to your hunting spot, too many people can ruin it to fast.

Regular season starts here in Utah on Conference Weekend so the countdown is on for it! I just found out I have an elk tag for the 1st week in October so we'll see if I can kill an elk and be back in time for the opener. That happened once in 5th grade, in fact, I wrote a paper on it in Mrs. Pobanz's class. I told the story of how we killed 3 elk that morning by 10 and made it back in time to go to Henry's Lake and catch 5 pound brookies that same night. That next week my parents got called into the classroom with me because my teacher was concerned with my honesty and accused me of making up stories. The look on her face when my dad told her it was true is probably the only thing I remember from 5th grade. Let's hope the first weekend in October can raise some eyebrows with the stories to follow it!