Duck duck I want a goose !
 

We did the goose thing this morning on a farm pond . Saw maybe 400 geese but none would cup their wings and come in . Had my circa 1899 EH 3 frame 32” with me shooting handloaded #1 Bismuth pushed with SR7625 .

We’ll try it again Friday. Might just take my Grade 2 10 top lever for a change of luck .

Still a nice way to spend a Tuesday :) That is a nice 10 gauge! I would like to add an EH to my collection one day. Good luck on Friday!

Thanks that’s my second of three EH’s . My first which is far nicer is an 1889 2 frame with 30” and the third one I’ve owned almost a year now is an 1891 2 frame with factory original 28” barrels .

Craig- best wishes for the goose with the EH. I too have a EH 3 frame 32 inch barrel made in 1899. SN 91071. I killed a lot of geese this year and got many of them with the EH. It killed the biggest goose I or my partner had ever seen around here. Two ounces shy of 14 pounds. Love that gun. No cripples. I used RST 2’s as they (RST) believe they pattern best. I don’t know. I used to hunt in the Valley out by Harrisonburg when I lived in Falls Church. Field hunting. As we say, “Take ‘em!” Good luck. Jeff

That pond is in Madison County not to far from US-15 . I’ve got Bismuth 1’s , 2’s and 4’s loaded . All 1 1/4 ounce pushed with 30 grains of SR7625 . I don’t load these by volume using the shot bar on the loader I weigh them on a scale , sounds kinda anal I’ll admit but that’s what I do . When I first started loading Bismuth 3 or 4 years ago all the folks I buy from were out of #2’s and I’ve never been a fan of BB’s so I went with #1’s , then last year BPI I think it was had Bismuth on sale so I got some #2 and #4 .

At the moment I have a dozen or so 10’s and as the saying goes “If the good Lords willing” I wanna kill a goose with each of them !

Thanks for the information! I like the way way you load the bismuth. I do it that way with 1 1/4 oz 12 gauge. Slow but how many do we get to shoot anyway? I probably will get into 10 gauge reloading but I would rather not. Best of luck out there. I’d post a EH goose photo but I m not very good at it.

One Big Ten is enough right now. I may buy a 6 frame 10 from a fellow trapshooter if he ever wants to get rid of it. I probably wouldn’t shoot it. Have you ever tried to sit up in a layout blind with one of those beasts. Scary.

I’ve got a layout blind I’ve used some I fall asleep in the darn thing more then anything .

A friend gave me a pair of goose breasts from a big lead gander. i cooked them up with my favorite recipe - rare/med rare, and it was so tough you couldn't cut the gravy with a knife. Gonna tenderize the next one with a splitting maul

Thank you John! My sentiments exactly. I roasted a nice fat goose last week and could barely cut it with a stiff sharp knife and was afraid the house would never recover from the smell! Most of it ended up on a board on top of a wood pile for the birds, but even the gray jays and the ravens won't touch it! I keep expecting to find a broken off raven beak stuck in it.

Is it a hammer or hammerless #6 ?

Hammerless. Nice gun. I've only seen it a few times but I have been promised right of first refusal on it. On tough geese I have had great success with a Jaccard tool and a simple marinade. I don't like to shoot birds I don't eat. I've had a very few that I passed on but a friend of mine's falcons don't care. Good luck next time out.

I've got several friends that will take all the geese you can give them . One guy feeds them to his dogs , another grinds them up and makes burger/sausage/jerky from them .

I've cooked a couple breasts kinda slow on the stove sliced thin with teriyaki sauce mushrooms , water chestnuts and bamboo shoots . They were edible but I kinda think its an acquired taste .

I think most of the goose hunters I know out here eat most of the geese they kill. One factor may be what they (the geese) eat. Corn (5$ a bushel on a good day), beans (9-10$), and alfalfa (lots of $$ a big bale). There’s not a lot of golf courses around. Young one are like corn fed beef. Accent on young. Lots of jerky gets made as well. Older birds.

But don't tell people they will pick the corn out of cow manure when the cows are being fed silage. You may not be able to give them away.

Wait a minute. You said they pick the corn out of the manure. No one said anything about eating the manure. Give us a break. What is the real truth about eating geese? Linda cooks whole geese and they are wonderful, no breasts for us. I've never smelled a hint of manure. By the way, no one ever got cold with a #6 frame ten as a blanket.

I think like anything else it’s an acquired taste . I like mule deer that have been grazing on sage flats , but the locals say it isn’t fit to eat . I suspect if that were the only venison I ever ate and ate it often I might have an aversion to it as well . I have friends that walk by a deer or turkey to eat damn tree rats , I wouldn’t give you two cents for a bucketful of cleaned squirrels . But that most likely comes from eating them when I was young the way my grandmother and great grandmother cooked them .

Spring turkeys that have spent the winter pecking corn from the manure piles at dairy farms here in the Northeast don't have a hint of foul flavor. If anything, the corn imparts a nice nutty flavor that wouldn't likely be possible at other times of the year when they eat bitter grasshoppers, ants and other bugs, mice, carrion, etc.






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I bard a goose in bacon with a half an orange, a stick of butter, and an onion with about 12 cloves stuck up their vent. Breast side down in hard cider with a tent of foil. At some point you roll the bird over and at another point you remove the foil to let the bacon brown. Taste like roast beef. I'll post the recipe if anyone wants it.

Harry- please do so. Thanks. Jeff

Turkeys eating carrion? Never such a thing

Well maybe they were eating the maggots but I have seen it twice on carcasses.





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The first source I looked had almost exclusively vegetation, with one mention of "insects". I think bugs are important to young poults

From my experience, they are opportunistic feeders and will sample and/or eat almost anything on the ground or low bushes... they're sort of scavengers.





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Go to a chicken or turkey yard if there is such a thing anymore . Both birds will eat their own dead . So as to them eating a carcass or maggots from the carcass I have no problem believing that .

I put the recipe for Wild Goose in Cider in the Wild Game recipe section.

Thank you ! When I started this thread it wasn’t meant to mean I wanted a goose to eat but rather I wanna shoot a few . But I think if we’re able to get a few before the season closes next month I might try again at cooking them .

Had an old friend, now deceased, that you could tell if he was liking a new female. He'd always say he "would eat the peanuts out of her poop".
I think he was serious.

Imagine that , I’ve heard some similar sentiments from others as well . Might even said some of my own once upon a time :whistle: