What Would You Do?

[J. A. EARLY]

Mike,

We were faced with the same situation Saturday. Temp in the teens and water mostly frozen. When we arrived twenty minutes before shooting time there were seventy-five on the water. Hunting with a cousin's son for the first time he said he would run them up. I said no, what I have found is if you can drive down to the pond and let the vehicle get them up they will usually come back. If you can't get a vehicle in there, a light makes them so nervous they always get up. A man in camo running them up does not work for me.

As we were putting out decoys at shooting time they came back to the little open water they had kept open all night. We had unloaded guns in the cases, breaking my rule of always loading the guns before the decoys go out. My young cousin got two shells in his gun and I had three. Five shots and there were now four dead birds on the ice. A single came over looking for his lost gang or mate and I brought him down. Believe it or not, my two wounded birds and his got up on the ice eventually and headed for the far bank over the course of an hour. He hunted them down for us and we had five birds. Looking across the field I told him there was a goose about a hundred yards away. Long story short, we shot at six birds and recovered six on a frozen pond. Both shooting Franchi 3.5" autos by coincidence, since I knew I needed all we could get for long range. A lucky day under less than ideal conditions.