A Dream Hunt

It was an unbelievable day. The snow was coming down sideways and the birds were committing suicide. I filled my Swan tag with a black neck collared bird that was sporting a Tarsus band to boot. I picked the bird out of a decoying flock that came in at first light.
Matt and I also shot about twenty snow geese, one of which was a yellow neck-collared blue! Since I had shot the swan earlier I let Matt claim the collar and leg band. On top of a limit of drake mallards I also recovered a Spoonbill for my bonus bird. The catch, the spoonbill was also banded! The leg iron on the spoonbill meant more to me than the collared Swan. The band on the spoonbill was so old I could only make out the “AD” of Advise.
I felt like I was on top of the world as I drove my brand new pick-up across the snowy cornfield. It was cold, but my body was nice and toasty with the feeling of accomplishment. As I stepped out of the truck into the decoy spread Matt showed me his bonus bird. It was a banded Greenwing Teal he bagged while I was walking back to the pickup.
Later we were sitting in a small diner in the middle of Nodak, decked out, wearing our lanyards in the joint, showing off the new bling. I was flirting with the cute waitress when I was awaken by my sounding alarm clock. Damn.
It was one of those dreams that are so real you have to check your surroundings when you wake. Needless to say, I was glad to find myself in my room, but discouraged that I had to be at work in a half an hour.
Since I was a young boy I have been having dreams about hunting. My most terrifying nightmares are also about waterfowling. Usually the nightmares are occurring on opening day of the duck season, and I am unable to hunt for various reasons. In these nightmares ducks are swarming me like mosquitoes and all I can do is sit there and point my finger at them.
I have a reoccurring dream about shooting a double-banded snow goose. The location of the hunt, the time of year and the hunting partners change, but it’s always the same bird. More specifically it’s a Ross goose with a twenty-five dollar “reward” band and the standard “Call” band.
I retrieve the bird and as I am walking back to my hunting partners I have a Kool-Aid smile on my face. I’m a nice guy, so I tell the boys, “I am keeping the reward band for myself and the rest of you guys can draw straws for the other leg iron.” Just like that, two hunting buddies become brothers in arms, connected through a bird, each of them having a band from the same bird on their respective lanyards.
From what I have read about dreaming the dreamer has little control of the events in the dream. Dreams typically deal with events that are occurring in the same time period in which the dream takes place. I dream about hunting more often before and during the waterfowl season. Dreams often include feelings and events that the dreamer has experienced in his or her life. I wonder what people who do not hunt dream about?
Scientists say we have many dreams throughout the night, but only remember very few of them. REM (Rapid Eye Movement) is the stage of sleep in which dreams occur. If the dreamer awakes during REM they have the greatest chance of remembering their dreams. So if you are awaken you have a greater chance of remembering your dreams. I rarely wake up at five in the morning naturally to go duck hunting.
Native Americans believed that dreams were “visions” of what is to come. I hope I do not forget my gun next year on duck opener, but there are banded birds in my future.

MN Early Goose Opener

Labor Day, with most of my peers taking jet-ski rides around the lakes or at the MN State Fair, Matt Gouette and I were in south central Minnesota scouting for geese. We choose to scout and hunt a new area for a couple different reasons. One, the new area is about half the distance of our old haunts in western Minnesota and two I heard from my friend J.D. Westerholm there was a good amount of geese down there.
The stock market guru Warren Buffet says that it is impossible to tell what will happen to the market in the short run, and very easy to tell what will happen in the long run. That is how I feel about goose hunting in Minnesota. The night before the early goose opener in Minnesota, even with a lot of time put in scouting, I am still not sure what to expect the next morning.
Matt Gouette and I had found a lot of geese in the area we were going to hunt, but we could not get permission for the two cut cornfields the geese were using. Through talking with the landowner we did know that the fields were going to be hunted on opening day. So our plan was to set up in a field in the flight path between the roost and the two fields the geese were using. With the commotion of opening day we figured we could coax a few young Canada geese into our decoys.
As a backup, there was a small pond and a larger body of water we could hunt. Both of which were with in a half-mile of the roost the majority of the birds were using. Once again, due to the confusion of opening day we were confident that with decoys and calling we could bring birds into range in either of these spots.
So as we drove to the field on the morning of Sept 6th, the outcome was going to be anyone’s guess. Were other hunters going to blow the roost? Was there going to be pass shooters in the area? Wind, no wind, rain? In the long-term I knew that if I put my time in I was going to have some good days hunting Canada geese in Minnesota. As for the short-term we were about to find out.
When Matt and I got to the field we were going to hunt there was little sign of other hunters in the area. As we set up the decoys and brushed the blinds we only saw a few vehicles drive by. Most of which were cars so I assumed that they were not hunters. It was getting lighter out and I kept thinking to myself, ‘this could be good.’
Once the hands of the clock indicated that it was legal shooting time the geese were more easy go than easy come. Goose calls being played by hunters began to sound all around us as if they were to start on queue.
Still I thought that we had an okay chance of getting a few geese but once the shooting started I wasn’t sure. All the flocks we saw coming off the roost flew higher and higher as the sun rose. All of which wanted nothing to do with our decoy spread. We even saw one flock circle a decoy spread that was not far from us like ten times. Then once the group shot, not a single bird fell. Which tells me that they were possibly out of range. Still the birds were acting more like late season birds.
Matt and I were packing up the spread when a DNR officer drove up and checked our licenses and shells. He said that a few pass shooters had geese and the hunters in the cut sweet corn fields had harvested a few geese. The officer also confirmed my assumption that hunters had set decoys on the water the geese were using as a roost. They too had shot a few geese.
My first Minnesota goose opener in nine years was a good reality check for Matt and I. It did solidify my belief that goose hunting on opening day is a roll of the dice, and that still it is better to be out and about than sitting on the couch. All was not for not, we were able to switch areas for the Sunday morning shoot and set up on a water hole with no scouting hoping to ‘run traffic.’ We shot one goose Sunday morning, the only bird that came into the decoys or with in range the whole weekend for that matter. When the bird came in, it came in hard, cupped and committed.