Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Kjúklingasalat

Many of you will recognize the Icelandic translation for Chicken Salad.  More salad today.  Snow, freezing mist, 30 mph northeast wind, not a chance of getting snow geese today.  Except they didn't consider who they were dealing with.  The last two hours at Knoble's pond was some of the most spectacular shooting of the season so far.  Huge bunches of 500 - 1000 birds finished in the decoys.  We had birds in the water and the rest looking for room to land.  It was glorious!

All of the birds in the last two hours were full of corn.  I suspect they were all local birds who spent the day in local corn fields and then went looking for water and a place to rest for the evening.  26 of them are resting in peace tonight.

My black lab Dani was the retriever of the day.  She made the swim across the pond and back at least six times today chasing cripples.  She is simply amazing.  Earlier in the day I watched a cripple make it to the far bank and head off into the woods.  During a lull in the action I sent Dani across the pond on a blind retrieve. When she reached the bank, I gave her the whistle command to sit. I then gave her a hand signal to go down the bank to her left.  Even though the bird had crawled out of the water more than an hour earlier, she picked up the scent and disappeared into the woods. Two minutes later she emerged from the woods with the goose.  She then made the swim back across the pond and came to heel and delivered the bird to hand.  Dani loves snow goose hunting more than I do.  She thrives on the high degree of difficulty.

Petey and his crew were at the Church pond today and harvested 18 birds.  Heath guided our third group today at Barber's pond and they bagged 17.  I think 61 birds for the day is definitely not kjúklingur skít!

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