Mainely Outdoors: Ghost geese

Bill Graves, Special to The County
12 years ago
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I’ve hunted big game, small game and dozens of species of wildfowl all over the U.S. and in a dozen or so foreign countries. So far, my favorite quarry is the wily, wary Canada goose, and I expect for day in and day out excitement and challenge these waterfowl will always top my list.
Twenty five years ago if a sportsman wanted to hunt geese it meant a trip to Maryland, Delaware, New York or Massachusetts to locate populations large enough to support gunning. I never believed Maine would attract enough geese to offer a season, let alone a September season and a long regular season. Thanks to a transplant program native honker numbers now prosper, and an alteration in the Atlantic flyway migration path from Canada brings hoards of geese into Aroostook County to feed and fatten all fall until weather drives them south.
Over the last couple of decades of attempting to coax geese into shotgun range throughout the Crown of Maine, I’ve experienced a myriad of weather conditions. Torrential rain, sleet, snow, gale force winds, numbing cold, and I’ve even hunted in a short sleeve T-shirt during a September heat wave. Sometimes two or three climate conditions occur in unison to produce some truly interesting outings. It’s been my experience however, that you don’t get a whole lot of shooting from the living room, so suck it up and get out there regardless of weather!
Thanks to that theory in late November some friends and I experienced one of the most unique hunts I’ve ever enjoyed. In fact, of the thousands of outings for Canada geese this phenomenon happened to me only once before, and that was during a trip to Easton, Maryland in the late 1980s. My three gunning companions, Remillie Norsworthy, Roger Shaw and Buddy Horr had never hunted under these circumstances, and like myself, they won’t ever forget.
It had been a cold night, in the teens, and a healthy frost had turned the ground white. A brisk 10 mile per hour breeze quickened our steps in loading gear into the truck and then we huddled and shivered waiting for the defroster to clear the windshield enough to safely drive through pre-dawn darkness.
Twenty minutes later our quartet set out four dozen full-body decoys using headlamps, erected our three-man hay bale blind and placed a layout blind beside it. Roger mentioned the temperature seemed warmer, and Buddy suggested it was just our exertion from setting up the spread. The first tendrils of daybreak crept from the sky as Roger and I drove the trucks far across the field and hid them in a tree-lined tractor trail.
As we returned to the blinds it became apparent sunrise wasn’t really late, nor was it clouds that made things appear so dim. A heavy ground fog shrouded the landscape and it felt like trying to gaze through a layer of gauze over our eyes. Roger was right, it was warming up. Frozen frosty ground combined with warming ambient air forms fog, and where we could view distant fields, hedgerows and trees at first light, now we couldn’t see the paved road 300 yards away.
Hidden in the blinds we chatted intermittently with silent periods to listen for the honking of approaching geese. It was 6:30 and hungry honkers should have been in the air searching for food, and our potato strewn field. Thickening fog reduced vision to less than 200 yards. Fifteen more minutes dragged by, and each of us wondered to ourselves the question all idle and worried goose hunters think: Are we in the wrong field, did the birds go somewhere else this morning?
Then from Buddy laying in the one-man blind outside came a hissed warning, ”Geese out front, right over the decoys!” By the time I reacted and popped open the top of the hay bale the trio of Canadas were to everyone’s left, out of their shooting zones and I was the only one with a chance. Shouldering my over and under Weatherby Athena I dropped the lead goose and then tumbled the second big bird for a double to fill my limit.
As I hustled out to retrieve my two geese, I noted the visibility had dropped to less than 100 yards and I could hear distant honking as another flock approached. I couldn’t believe the first birds arrived without a sound, a fairly rare occurrence since geese normally communicate noisily and frequently.
The honking got louder as the geese homed in on my calling and suddenly became ghostly silhouettes in the fog on their first pass beyond the decoys. On the second flyby a pair got too close and Buddy and Roger each cartwheeled a goose. Over the next 45 minutes I called at random, sometimes birds would answer, zero in on our location and then suddenly appear out of the fog like winged apparitions.
It was a surreal experience, never knowing exactly where the big honkers were going to appear, and then suddenly winging past and disappearing back into the thick mist just as quickly. There was a good deal of shooting, several misses, but soon enough we had our eight-bird limit. Even while we picked up our decoy spread, geese came and went wheeling about in the fog above and around us. A pair even landed 25 yards away as we packed our blinds up, and fed unconcerned at our voices and moving shadows until I finally drove the truck up to pack our gear, and then they took wing.
There’s no such thing as a bad goose hunt in my book, but on rare occasions an outing occurs that will always be remembered and recounted for years. I wish every devout waterfowler could experience at least one ghost goose hunt in the fog, the memory will never fade away.