Goose Hunting in Southeastern Idaho Dec 2009

As you know from my blog, I am not much of a waterfowl hunter. I think it’s because of two reasons, I love to walk too much to sit in a blind or lay in a field, and I don’t really care for the taste of duck. That said, I have been doing a little goose hunting the past two weeks and have had a ball. I’ve got to say, when 20 geese are cupped up with their big black feet splayed out in front of them settling into your decoys, it’s an awesome sight.

There seems to be a good number of geese here in southeastern Idaho this year and I’ve had good luck decoying them in. Enough that now I have to start enjoying the taste of goose.

While I was learning the game the first few times out I left Allie at home. Now I’ll start taking her along. I just didn’t want to have to try to keep her still, while tryng to figure everything else out that is going on as birds are coming in. She’s an upland flushing dog; keeping still doesn’t come naturally to her. She’ll have to learn.

Also, she is a fairly small dog (55 lbs). I purposely breed her small for the uplands so she could hunt chukars and desert quail for days on end. When it comes to geese, well, they’re huge. She won’t have any problem subduing them, she’s got plenty of prey drive. It’s the retrieving that will be the challenge. She can’t even get her mouth around a 8 -10 pound honker. We’ve been working on it in the yard and she has figured out the wing carry, so we’ll see how it goes this week.