Unusual Goose Achievements

[6.5x55SE]

This week following consecutive morning and evening flights I realised I had shot " 3 Species of Geese " from " 3 Different County's "

Until the Canada's became thin on the ground several mornings in the past I've shot Canada Greylag and Pink's in the same flight many times and one February on the foreshore where I first met Robert (Anser2) I shot Canada Greylag Pinkfeet and Whitefront

Taking a friend the first day's of October who had never heard seen yet shoot a Pink that early was giving me a right ear bashing as I had my 20ga The sound of Pink's only increased the stick I was getting.

Five Pink's responded to my calling Two slightly in front of the three came as good as it gets. Take the Pair I told my friend as he shot I took the leader of three only to see ALL three fold turning left I saw two Pink's climing picking the front Pink Bang BOTH folded most remarkable was all five was killed stone dead. The look of disbelief on my friends face still is fresh in my mind some 30+ years later he did manage to shoot his First October Pink whilst it was now my turn to give him some abuse and still remind him that he only shot Geese because I sleeved my 20ga.

In the Eighties having shot Greylag near the River Cree Scotland morning flight that evening saw me do evening flight on the Norfolk coast and shot Pink's

My last as not to bore you all

Myself and friend doing morning flight on the Island of Islay both had shot Barnacle-Greenland Whitefront and Greylag Geese when a pair appeared on course for us. Pink's shouted my friend never said I as in Eleven previous visit's to Islay I'd never heard or seen any Pink's.

Well they was defiantly Pink's and we took one each for a fantastic end to our flight.

[Smiler23]

My unusual goose encounters are when one falls out of the sky after I fire a gun at it.... Hahaha

[Fal]

My unusual goose encounters are when one falls out of the sky after I fire a gun at it.... Hahaha

 

 

Same here!

[Farma Geddon]

Mine was meeting Motty and Glider.

[marsh man]

My unusual goose achievement was coming home with two Pinks without firing a shot , in fact I never had my gun only my stick and my old dog .

 

I had seen a couple of chaps fire at a small skein which were well up , nothing dropped out there and then but when they were well over the river one of geese was having a job keeping up with the rest , his wing beats were getting slower and finally they packed up and down he came .

 

I knew the chaps couldn't get it as there was no way across the river where they were and it was a six mile trip to get to the other side , I had marked it by counting the marking posts from a belt of trees where I have the shooting rights for pigeons, so I knew roughly where it was.

 

After getting home , read the paper and had a bit of breakfast the rest of the day was more or less free so back out again, only this time I was heading for the other side of the river to see if I find the goose .

 

Walking along the wall and counting the top of the posts I finally came to the one where I had seen it come down and has luck would have it the field was a freshly cut beet field , after looking through my binoculars, low and behold there it was laying on its back about a hundred yards in front of me.

 

When I got level with it I sent the dog across the dyke and instead of the old bugxer going after that one he ran along the dyke and got another that had a broken wing , who got that or where it came from I didn't have a clue , so when he brought that one back he then whipped across the field after the dead one . so as it turned out it was a job well done , not only did I find the one I went to look for I also found another that must have been in a fair bit of pain , so two geese without firing a shot .

[Penelope]

Three greys with one shot as they flew line abreast low over the water of a big irrigation reservoir on a syndicate I'm a member of in Essex, picked out the closest at about 35 yards, swung fired and all three fell dead.

 

Two greys for one shot from a group of 4 as they came high over my right shoulder on a syndicate in Northants. Picked a bird and swung, fired and that and another goose that was behind and above the one I fired at fell out.

[oowee]

I have yet to encounter one. Lots on the stubbles here but its close to an sssi here.

Farmer says that you have to put a brick in them for cooking to hold the fat cook them for 4 hrs then throw the bird away and eat the brick as its softer than the bird. :-)

[anser2]

One thing I have always wanted to do was to get a full house of legal geese in the same season. While I have bagged all the 5 species on the list I have not managed it in the same season yet.

 

Had one or two unusual things happed while goose shooting. I was decoying geese one day on a grass meadow, but the geese wanted another marsh elsewhere. Hovever that morning wood pigeons loved the goose decoy set up and all hundreds came into the decoys , but 3.5 BB are hardly the right shell for pigeons.

 

Then there was a day when I stalked a bunch of whitefronts on a narrow long strip of water and as I looked over the dune top there were the whitefronts and behind them 3,000 brents. The whitefronts got up in easy range , but so did the brents. I hate to think what effect 3oz of number 3 would have had on that solid wall of brents behind them. Certantly would have broken the clubs limit bag.

 

Spent all morning after the geese without a bird comming within range. As I was walking back I flushed a snipe whick turned back overhead , but very high. Unthinking I shot killing it at a good 50 yards with a single BB pellet in the neck.

 

Sometimes you need a bit of luck when shooting geese. I had been out one evening , but no pinks apeared at dusk. At that time I had no dog ( I had lost my old girl a few weeks before and the puppy was no way near ready to tackle geese ) . Not expecting much I had only taken 10 cartridges . As it got dark the tide crept around my hide in the sand dunes and rather than take a long walk around the dunes to get home I sat the tide out under the stars. After an hour the moon came out and the pinks started to flight out to roost very low. The sky however was clear making it hard to see the birds. In the next hour I shot 4 birds , but also knew I had hit a couple more which in the darkness were impossable to see exactly where they had come down. However I knew with the east wind and the tidal currents any lost birds would wash up a few hundred yards further along the beach.

 

Returning early the next morning one bird flapped out of the dunes and was quickly collected , but even more amazingly was the 4 more I collected off the beach tide line. 9 for 10 shots in very poor light was for me exceptional shooting and fortunetly before the days of bag limits or I would have had a hard job explaining that bag to the club committee.

 

Finaly it was the seasons end and a friend and I had an unsuccessful week after the pinks. Every morning I had seen 5 teal flight up the big creek behind me that I had crossed in the darkness. They were the only duck I had seen all week. My mate had decided the chances of a goose were nill on such a still morning and elected to stay in bed. I had no dog at this time but his black lab Jake knew me very well and would retrieve for me so he came with me for the flight. By Friday the tides were too big to cross the creek so I flighted beside it. Sure enough just as it was getting light the 5 teal came down the creek and despite being loaded with goose shells I had a shot at them. No less than 4 fell to the first shot and unable to resist it I killed the last bird with the right barrel.

 

Jake quickly retrieved the first two and was some what surprises when I sent him for a third , a fourth and looked at me in disbeleve when i sent him out for the final bird.

Edited October 2, 2015 by anser2

[Oldtoad]

A mate of mine had a blank trip one year and on our night out at the end of the trip he snogged a granny in a nightclub to make sure he had something in the game book!

[aister]

Don't know if you would call it unusual but certainly the most memorable goose achievement for me was a right and a left of high grelags with a friend's double 4, it's certainly a morning I won't forget in a hurry.

 

A more unusual one for me was one time a friend and I arrived at the head of a small field with goose decoying in mind but our hearts sank when we heard that the geese were already in and feeding with the moon. I shone with my torch and sure enough we could just make out that a few geese were already there, I switched my torch off and we put our gear down so we could decide on what to do. Then all of a sudden the geese were up and I realized that max was no longer at my side, I flicked on the torch to find that the geese were gone and max was heading back with a big greylag in his mouth. I couldn't believe it, I was mortified but thankfully the goose was unscathed and he flew of pretty disgruntled at being disturbed so early.

Edited October 5, 2015 by aister

[fenboy]

I saw motty shoot a goose that came straight down ------------ now that is unusual , glider the lab was not impressed as she did not get her regular 400 yard sprint out on the mud.