November 28, 2014
Havre
de Grace, Maryland
I recently got a once
in a lifetime opportunity to hunt Canadian geese in Maryland. I went to
Baltimore to see my Fiancé’s family for Thanksgiving and my future father-in-law was kind enough to plan a goose hunt for us. So I packed my gear and brought it on the 1,450 mile trip to Maryland. The hunt started at 4 AM when we met up with Joey of Joey Jobes Gunning Decoys at his local shop and
headed for the duck blind. It was a bitter cold morning, especially for a southern boy.
It was about 27 degrees when we started setting out the decoys before dawn. We were hunting on a small pond that had not seen any goose hunters during the 2014 season. We huddled in the blind that was made out of short pine and cedar branches and waited on the first geese to make their way to our pond.
The first wave of geese
came through twenty minutes after daylight. The first wave was around 200
geese. The geese were coming from local farms where they were feeding throughout the night. Joey began to call the geese with various goose calls when we could tell the geese were contemplating landing in the pond. The first wave was easily fooled and attempted to land in the pond. We waited until the very last second before we all stood up and emptied our shotguns into the flock, dropping no geese. I'm not sure if we were not shooting accurately, jittery from excitement or distracted by the number of birds but there was a moment of silence after the flock left where everyone understood that we needed to shoot better. We had several flocks come in on the pond throughout the day and these flocks were much smaller averaging 3-4 birds. We had much better luck shooting the geese out of the smaller flocks. The 13 different hunters sharing our blind were able to kill 23 different geese that day. This was a very exciting hunt, one that
I will never forget.
We took several geese home and Joe prepared them for dinner the following night. The meat was excellent - not too tough and the flavor was not too strong. The meat was prepared two ways: one with orange juice and one with wine. The meat prepared with the orange juice was the group's favorite because it was the most tender. This was one of the most exciting hunt I've been on to date. Joe even got me a Canadian goose replica for a wedding gift. Thanks Joe!
We took several geese home and Joe prepared them for dinner the following night. The meat was excellent - not too tough and the flavor was not too strong. The meat was prepared two ways: one with orange juice and one with wine. The meat prepared with the orange juice was the group's favorite because it was the most tender. This was one of the most exciting hunt I've been on to date. Joe even got me a Canadian goose replica for a wedding gift. Thanks Joe!