Several of the team members made a trip out west to Russel, Kansas. In hopes to get after some of these geese, and possibly ducks. We met up with a long time friend J.W. Strobel. Who had scouted the area out and had some places lined up for us to come hunt.

The first day was cold and icy. We had to break ice to set decoys up. It was really foggy and a mild 17 degrees. We set our spread and waited for daylight. You could hear the geese talking out on the lake. Once daylight came we had our first duck land just outside of our spread. We chose to wait and see if it would bring others in. Instead it swam off and we could only stand and watch as hundreds of geese flew off the lake.

With so many of us calling we must have sounded pretty good. A lot of the geese groups got up and came our way. They just keep out of our range. We did a little work on the blind thinking maybe it wasn’t camoed good enough. And eventually we got a couple shot. One fell and one made it back to the bigger group and then left.

Once things started settling down and most of the birds had moved off to feed in the morning. We turned out sights on hitting a few fields. The one we went after was a winter wheat field. Really short fooliage, and snow drifts. As we headed into the field we bumped a pretty big group that was already in the field. But we felt pretty good because they just kept circling the field when we were setting up dekes.

They eventually moved off. We had our spread set up and where waiting. One single kept circling but just out of range. We started calling pretty agressively and brought him around one more time. Two of our group peeled off to see where the other geese we kept hearing were. They headed up over the hill. You could see forever out there.

As we called to the single, I said wouldn’t that be sweet if those two got a shot at that bird, about that time the bird crumbled. We never heard the shot and then we heard the second shot. They knocked him down. This bird had hung around us for a good 45 minutes. Soon after we heard the second shot a larger group got up. They came our way and wanted to land but they were just out of range. They saw something they didn’t like in our spread and they moved off.

That was the end of day one.

The second day we started back at the lake again. Feeling pretty good, cause we knew the birds where there. They didn’t want to play that day. I think we got off a few shots but nothing fell. We headed out around 12:00 and headed back to our end of the state.

Well 4 team members (Brandon, Adam, Brian, & Curt) went out on Saturday in attempt to shoot a few more dove.  We walked into the field around 2:45pm to see if we could get some stragglers from feeding and watering.  Weather conditions were perfect, slight breeze, warm, and sunny.  Well we did indeed shoot at a few when we got there, but the activity didnt pick up until 5pm.  It was pretty slow.  Only saw about 2 birds every 10-15 min. We ended up with 8 birds among 4 of us.  Our shot ratio was about 3 shots to one bird, way under the national average of 8 shots to a bird.  Not a bad day, just not alot of activity.

Curt, Team SnK

Dove season has arrived,

With the staff hunting in different areas this past weekend, four of the staff members and a younger brother of one of the staff members got together for two different hunts on a public dove controlled area.  The first hunt was a morning hunt, the five members arrived early wanting to be able to gain access to the field and get a good spot.  Shortly after arriving and discussing where we should head to in the field, trucks began pouring into the area.  The five members gathered their gear and we were off to an unknown area in the field.  We picked a spot hoping it would pay off in the end, within the next 30 minutes upwards of 30 more hunters joined the field, and 5 minutes after legal shooting the shots began to fly.  Groups in all areas of the field were taking shots, some connecting others not.  In the end and about 3 hours later our group was out of ammo and headed back to the truck with 38 birds.

The same group gathered for an afternoon hunt that same weekend, after arriving to find several different groups already there, we headed to a different spot in the field we had some success on our previous hunt.  Setting up in a different spot we were wondering what results we would get in this spot.  On this hunt we had another young hunter join us, my seven year old daughter, it was hot and very little wind but she stuck it out like a champ.  The shooting was slow to start the hunt, but after an hour or so of being there it slowly started to pick up.  In the end our group of five shooters managed 63 birds before we ran out of ammo again.  All in all it was a good weekend for the staff as we managed over 100 birds with our group of five.  And with a rough estimate of close to 900 shots fired, our staff was close to the national average of 8 shots per bird.  Good luck to everyone the rest of the season.

Chuck, Team SnK

Over the course of the weekend founder Shaun and I attempted to dove hunt in a few different fields.  The first field was slow but we kept on seeing doves flying from hay bail to hay bail in the field across from us.  Not sure why they didn’t want the hay bails in our field we were sitting in, so we moved.  As soon as we stepped foot in the new field, dove started flying out of the grass like pheasant.  Shots were fired and the entire ground lifted up.  There were soo many birds we couldn’t even hardly shoot because of the ahhh watching the birds.  We eventually sat down by some hay bails and then it was on.  Birds flying everywhere!  Shots fired and only a few birds down.  We ended up with about 20 birds over the weekend.  Not great, but not bad for 2 guys.

Curt, Team SnK

Well its September 1st and Dove season has finally begun.  This weekend should be alot of fun for the whole staff.  There have been TONS of dove flying around and we are eager to shoot.  Little bit of a scare though.  It has been unusually cool for this time of year so lets hope the dove don’t move out very fast.  Good luck to all you hunters this weekend!

Curt, Team SnK

Here is our final hunt for the 2008-2009 goose season.

With the hunting season coming up fast. I think I have all my stands in place and mock scrapes made. I will keep you posted.

I finally decided to go ahead and get a faster bow.