Well, I finally got to hunt on Monday after we got some good, cold weather. The only real problem with the cold and snow was the winds...clocking around 35+ mph steady with gusts to about 45+ mph!
I picked a field specifically to run a traffic hunt on, where the birds were hitting a golf course about 1/3 mile north east of my spot. I had watched them come n from the north west, off the lake for a few days and figured while I couldn't hunt the course, I might stand a chance of running traffic on them. I was at the field at about 6:15 and picked the most visible spot I could and one where I killed some birds on the opener of the early season and started setting up. The first problem I had to deal with was the wind! To say it was strong is like calling Mike Tyson a boxer with some pop in his punches! The second obstacle was the ground...gravelly, rocky stuff that while providing excellent drainage can prove difficult to get a decoy stake into. I set my blind where I wanted it and put on my new Rogers snow cover (I'll cover that a little later), and started putting out my Big Al's silos. I didn't have too bad of a time with getting the stands into the ground and when I did run into alot of resistance I just picked another spot until I got it to seat in the ground. What I did have an issue with was that the ground, being quite porous, would not hold the decoys in such high winds and so I could not alternate the angles at which I put them out, but had to face them all into the wind. I put about 2 dozen out and when I finally just couldn't stand to buck the wind any more, I decided to fill in with almost 2 dozen Tangle Free FBs to add some bulk and angles to the spread. The slios wiggled in the wind like they were going to be yanked off their stands and fly into the next county, but they stayed put, the 2 pronged stands giving them a better purchase in the soil. As you can see from the pics, the Big Al's decoys are very visible. The TFs coloration causes them to almost blend in with the snow compared to how the darker colors on the silos almost jump out at you. A definite plus when running traffic imo. The size difference is clear as well with the Big Al's silos dwarfing the TF Lessers. Around 8:00am, I finally heard the first distant honks, and I mean these gese were at least a mile off, but with the wind like it was, I heard them long before I ever saw them clear the tree line, headed to the north end of the golf course about 2/3 mile from me. When they were almost due north of me and about a 1/2 mile out, I hit the flag and made a series of clucks and honks as loud as I could on the highest pitch call I have to cut the wind(Cole's Carnage Collector). The birds started to turn almost immediately and headed to my spot quartering with the wind. They were fairly high as they made their turn, but dropped altitude fast as they came right in to the deeks. I had made only a minimum of calls after getting their attention matching their cadence and only flagged once more when they were finishing their turn about 500 yards out. The first 2 groups commited and tried to land together, the smaller, right most group being forced farther to my right by the larger group. When the first couple birds in the larger left group started to touch down, I came up to shoot but caught my SBE II on the snow cover and by the time I got it dislodged, the birds were already flaring off hard with the aid of the strong winds to my left and away from me. I managed one bird out of the right group, and began to comeback call and high pitch moan to the next 2 bunches that had started veer off at my shooting. They turned right in and commited and this time I dropped the first bird but hit the second twice and just couldn't seem to drop him. I know I was shooting behind the birds as I have to admit I was a bit rusty. The birds all seemed to finish on the side of the spread with the largest concetration of the silos. I owe that fact to simply the size and visibility factor of the silos over the FBs Had it not been for poor shooting I would surely have been limited or close to my 5 bird limit very quickly. As for the snow cover...VERY WELL BUILT and had I read the dirrections before ever trying to put it on my blind at zero dark thirty, I would have noticed the velcro tabs that go around the door handles and secure the material more tightly and prevent your gun from getting caught but I'm a guy and we don't need directions...right? As you can see from the pics, the silos stick out like a sore toe in the snow. I even purposely added one feeder silo to the far left groups of TF walkers just to show how a darker, larger decoy is simply just more visible at long distance. At the farthest pic, the TFs almost get lost in the snow, while that single Big Al's silo is easily visible to the front of the leftmost group. I will hopefully get to use them all by them selves soon and show how they work solo. Now...all we need are some new migrators to shoot at.
Goosin ain't easy. West siiiide!
N.O. Outdoors, President and C.E.O. "You try hard so we don't have to".
Team Banana Hamock
Try shootin em in the rooter, not the tooter...
