Snow Goose 2012

[uwleagle]

Did I hear a possible 80 degree's in SD on Friday ?

Yup- going to be a warm one in the blind all weekend.

[Bryce]

Gonna try to get up and set up nodak camp on Saturday and hunt for a few days. Gotta clean up after LOW trip, couple appointments, and two days of safety training or would be on my way earlier. May miss most of leading edge but sounds like lots of juvies yet to come.

[Maxxed Out]

Bring your sunblock! I didn't even think about it and I paid the price. My face is just now getting to medium rare after three days of well done.

[carpshooterdeluxe]

Bring your sunblock! I didn't even think about it and I paid the price. My face is just now getting to medium rare after three days of well done.

A lot of red faces around sioux falls right now between everybody golfing, chasing snows, and pounding walleyes.

[TylerS]

Heard SPECKS, of all things, fly over my house in Fargo last night. They were, of course, joined by a few hundred Canadas. With the strong south wind and unseasonably warm temps, I gotta believe the snows will be charging north in record pace. I'm going to head west Saturday with the pooch to poke around a bit, but if the majority of birds have passed by then, I won't be surprised.

The only caveat is the extreme lack of sheetwater in the area due to our "drought" this winter. Little flooding in the fields at the moment, plus all the sloughs and other bodies of water are still froze up solid. A few days of warm temps and wind might open up something, but that's a lot of ice to chew through...

[Bryce]

Just had a flock of about 200 sobs over our house by Marystown. Bet I could really get the neighbors going by setting up the spread in the back yard with 4 speakers squawking away.

[TylerS]

For what its worth, reports in Nodak area bout as varied as they come. One guy says all the birds are flying straight into Canada, and another guy says he's finding flocks in every field he looks. Then there still are reports of many, many birds to the south in Nebraska and South Dakota.

People are getting fidgety thinking the migration is going to be over in the blink of an eye. Only problem is that, with our extreme lack of snow cover this winter, sheet water is virtually nonexistent. Coupled with the fact that much of the sloughs and lakes are still froze over, and the geese don't have any place to roost. I have a feeling that, even with the nice weather, the birds will be around for a while. Once the ponds open up, however (i.e. 70-degree temps this weekend) things could change in a hurry.

[cbrooks]

Did some hunting today. We ended up north of Devils lake about 30 or so miles. Biggest flock we saw was about 5 thou. Mostly flocks of 100 or 200. All of our geese were adults except for one.

[ChuckN]

Spent the past few days in east central Nodak. Great weather! Warm, windy and thank goodness one morning of fog so we could put the hammer down on those adults. These are all leading edge birds, and there were enormous numbers of them. Very tough to decoy. They were not in a hurry to move north, and only saw one good day (Saturday) of migration, with a lot of them stopping to check out a big roost. Must have easily had 100K birds to hunt in a matter of 5 square miles during those three days and we didn't have to move much. Roosts formed everywhere around us at any given point, perhaps the most intriguing and challenging hunts of all time. We learned a lot of things about snow geese during this trip!

[Bryce]

Tough going for us at sodak border. 4 birds on 2 morning and 2 evening hunts spread over 3 days. Had probably a dozen roosts within 5 miles of us on a corn hill that historically either has birds in the field or in the small roost adjoining it. Birds just weren't moving. Had some birds trading between 2 roosts a little over a mile from us and that is what we pulled our birds in from. Otherwise the birds just sat. Maybe got up and circled a few times to sit right back down. Maybe too windy? Decided to use the wisdom of old age and used the two departing hunters to help pick up the spread late Monday morning to avoid having to pick it up myself. Was pretty beat up from the wind anyways. Drove around a little bit to see what was what. After the rain, the wind let up and there were geese flying and feeding everywhere. Not sure about our set field. Not a chance I was going to drive by and see it stuffed full. Was going to pull the shack home out of frustration but it now awaits my return late this week.

3 of 4 birds were juvies. Shooting was not spectacular on our part. Could have potentially ended up with a dozen or so. Thinking of switching to 3" shells. Going to the plug with 3 1/2"ers in a t-shirt had me checking for blood.

[Finlander]

After hunting in northern SD for snows from Wednesday to Saturday, we ended up with 61. We got 52 on 2 different sneaks as we gave up decoying when they just sat there day after day so we belly crawled to them and had a little fun! And it looked like there were very few left to hunt on Saturday! Oh well, every year is different!

[Bryce]

Not ready to give up yet.

Don't hate em quite bad enough to belly crawl. Rather shoot em in the face.

[Bryce]

Hit 80 degrees last weekend, 28 in the field this morning.

[Gordie]

great Pics Bryce and I"m wishin I was shooting some snows

[Bryce]

Last evening hunt in nodak for 2012???

[SAX]

nice picture Bryce....

BTW how did your hockey team do yesterday?

Get your tickets to tampa yet?

Last evening hunt in nodak for 2012???

[Bryce]

Wrapped up for the season.

[chub]

A closet Gopher fan eh?

LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Shane Z]

Two weekends ago we shot over 90 Adult birds in 2.5 days. As stated in a few other forums "the birds are all going NORTH" was not accurate AT ALL. A majority of the birds that head North are Scouting birds that push back South in the later morning. We saw well over a million birds every day with South winds reaching up to 30-40 mph and temps around 80 by mid-day, and I can tell you first hand that I didn't see a flock taking advantage of the wind the entire weekend.

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[Bryce]

Need to budget better next year. Info on other sites that I'm not allowed to share here of a near 400 bird day. Details are understandably a bit sketchy on exactly where but sounding like northern sodak still. Best guess of 7 cases of shells by those involved in the slaughter. Maybe goo back was there?

[uwleagle]

I've seen pictures of that 393 bird shoot posted all over the internet on different sites, plus I got that pic texted to me from a friend, whos friend was on that hunt. Pretty amazing.

A buddy and I shot 21 on Monday night and we were only out for a couple hours after work with a very small decoy spread. We were not even in the northern part of the state. Their are still birds in Sodak you just have to burn some serious money on gas finding them, but if you do it pays off because they are dumb juvies.