I've got 8 goose bands on my lanyard these days as well, and about a dozen ducks. My original lanyard with all my bands killed in younger days went missing when somebody broke into my truck and stole my shooting bag. There were half a dozen more geese and about the same in ducks including a wood duck band and a Jack Miner goose.

I used to know a couple guys from Kentucky that had double and triple strings of wood duck bands. They lived in an area that did huge studies on them and banded hundreds every year. So in the early season, nearly every one they killed had a band. My wood duck band actually came out of this area but I killed it in Illinois.

My teal band has a fun story. We were hunting opening morning in Ontario a few years ago. One of the guys with us took a snap shot at a bunch of bluewings that buzzed by and knocked one down. Well don't you know it was banded, first teal band I'd ever seen shot. Exactly a week later, on the exact same point, with the exact same group of hunters, I did the exact same thing, but on a bunch of greenwings. Mine was banded as well! We figured they'd both been banded recently right there on the lake. Well we were wrong big time, his had been banded on the prairie as a duckling and mine had been banded the January before in South Carolina.

Off that same point a couple season before I killed a mallard drake that was banded. He'd been ringed exactly 30 days before on an almost perfectly straight line dead west of there in Wisconsin. I think he must have been lost, he certainly wasn't traveling anything like south anyway.

Up in Quebec they do a lot of banding on the area we hunt so every year we always get at least one band. There are a ton of blacks up there and I'm sure they band them as well but I've never seen one shot that had a ring. Every one we've ever killed that was locally done was a mallard drake. Don killed a hen mallard three years ago but it had been banded in Vermont! I guess they just band drake mallards in Quebec, it's kind of weird......

does that "new fangled" one have a removeable divider between the two ovens?

I once had a GM made one from the fifties that was so big you could heat treat a smart car in :rotf:

I hunt about 25 miles west of the Jack Miner refuge in Canada, so Miner bands are reasonably common to us. Old Miner bands used to fetch long money on ebay, until some jerk began counterfeiting them

You know where I hunt John, and it's not much further than that either. But we've never shot one on a goose or a duck. I guess the Miner birds just don't trade back and forth on St. Clair much. It's odd, we've often commented on it.

DLH

Only one oven. The one on the left is a "grillevator" broiler. The top has a griddle between the burners. it is an O'Keefe and Merrit brand. Top of the line in "48". The grillevator has a lever that raises the broiler up and down. Very classy!

Good story on the bands. They have started banding cinnamon teal here this year but we never kill any as they leave before season and return after.

Here are a couple more shots of the geese showing size difference.
I hang my birds a good week to 10 days so still have them fully clothed. Upon closer inspection I saw I do have 3 sub species of Canadas. A Giant, a Western and a Richardson's. Here they are all 3 together with a greenhead and ammo box for scale. One of the big guy and little guy together and the little guy with a mallard to show how small he is. I promise no more of these.

I said to my father one day, musing about the old things in the house, why do I like them around? He said, "I don't know. Maybe it's because we want to know where we came from."

Those Monarch ranges are great. Very well made and long lasting. All we get in Alaska are the lesser Canadians that are barely larger than a mature greenhead.

AWESOME PICTURES and great stories from both you and Destry. The stories are great when paired with pictures. Just fantastic. What a terrific group of gun lovers and hunters.

Peter, I really agree with you on the sprig. They are so striking to watch fly and even though it is quite frustrating when they circle the decoys endlessly, it is a real treat to watch them.

In January we'll see male groups courting a female and flying around the rice fields. Included is a picture that caught just such a group two years ago flying over the blind. We didn't shoot.....it was so sweet just watching them.

It's funny to me, out here in the Midwest a full plumage drake pintail is a once every 10 years (maybe) sort of deal. I can count on one hand the ones I've shot in all my gunning. But you get out on the West Coast and they're everywhere. The last one I was in on shooting was banded if you can believe it. My buddy Nate and I doubled up on it and I'd killed a banded mallard drake the day before so he kept it.

DLH