Year: 2020

We raised the white snow goose flag to the 2020 snow goose season. Both Saturday and Sunday were slow; the rosey 10-day forecast turned to snow Saturday morning. Thankfully we didn’t get the 3-6 inches they predicted Friday. It is always a crapshoot hunting snow geese in the snow. We have had good hunts in … [Read More]

We only have two groups hunting this weekend; the rest of us pulled decoys all day. One field shot 32 the other shot 4. Tomorrow it is going to snow up to 5 inches. We will see how the affects the hunting. I’m not sure how far north the snow is going to be. Hopefully, … [Read More]

We have been patiently waiting for another big day. Today we got a nice one. The high field shot 45 snow geese and our low field 4. There were some fields that did well today. The day started with rain and south wind changing to sunny and a north wind. It was a nice day. 

Hunting was a little better than yesterday. Our high field was 15, and the low field shot 3. The low field moved midday to a new set up. If they had hunted it all day, I think they would have shot a few more. The high field was lower than the last couple of days, but … [Read More]

We are in a bit of a valley. Today’s results were very similar to yesterday’s.  Our high field shot 24 snows with a low of 0. We are going to move one of the fields to a better flight line. Hopefully, that will help us. 

The wind blew hard again today. There are plenty of birds in the area but they just are not trading around with these high winds. They just hit a field and sit. Our high field today was 21 snow geese, all the rest were in single digits. Tomorrow’s forecast is rain, maybe 1 1/2 inches. … [Read More]

I would rather hunt in too little rather than too much wind. Today was too much, with wind gusts of 40 mph. The best field shot 22 and the worst shot a 0. There was a number of field in the low single digits. There was not a lot of trading around today, no doubt … [Read More]

Too much wind yesterday, too little this morning with frost. If only we could wave a wand giving us half the wind for both days. We shot our 5th band for the year. It was a rare too young to fly, so it was a juvy in 2013. Most of the bands we get are … [Read More]

The wind howled today. Gusts up to 50 mph, the radio said. I would imagine that in the morning there will need to be some clean up done to the decoys. When we set them, the ground was kind of hard. Some were not pushed far enough into the ground and certainly blew over today. … [Read More]

Today was another nice average day. The mornings were much slower than in the afternoon. Late afternoon there were a lot of birds rolling north—still more than plenty of birds to hunt in the area. I spoke with several guide friends. There are snow geese in North Dakota was one report. Another shot 30 snow … [Read More]

As I was sitting here getting ready to type this report, I received a text from my good friend and past guide Jake Groth. The text message read, twenty years ago today, we were hunting in SW IA for snow geese. That hunt was his first-ever snow goose hunt and my first hunt during the … [Read More]

Today was a great day; our high field shot 67 snow geese. The low fields shot 6 & 7. All the rest of the groups were 22 or better. I didn’t talk to all the guides tonight but all of them I did speak with saw plenty of birds and had big flocks work them … [Read More]

Today was a beautiful migration day. I returned to SW IA from Decorah. The whole way down I saw migrating honkers. For the hunters the morning started out with no wind, once it picked up it was from the south, by the end of the day it was out of the north. Our high field … [Read More]

Day two in Iowa was better. A couple of the groups had a pretty solid hunt. Our high field shot 36 snow geese, the low field shot 7. This morning they guys saw a ton of geese but they didn’t work too well. Our forecasted weather looks good. Oh, the picture is of a blue … [Read More]

The first day of our Iowa hunting would fall into the slow category. There are a bunch of birds, but we were sword fighting with mean adults. The guides that I talked to said they saw plenty, but no wind in the morning hurt them. The high field shot ten, and our low field shot … [Read More]

We hunted this morning, shooting three and eating breakfast by 9 am. We should have had two more, but I said one more pass, and the bird left. It was the first flock of the day that worked us so I had to see. Should have known with a wind speed of “calm” that if … [Read More]

Today we set the rest of the decoy spreads. Oh, how we love rolling hill terraced cornfields. Tuck those blinds into the dip on the terrace, find some foxtail, stubble those blind up, poof gone! The green arrow points to a row of laydown blinds. You can’t see them. Tomorrow morning we are going to do … [Read More]

Sunday and Monday have been some pretty long days. We are out of our guiding routine, so our sleep schedule is all off tilt. Sunday we pulled spreads. Monday packed up all our gear then drove 8 hours up to Iowa. Today two of us touched base with landowners the rest set 3 fields. There … [Read More]

Yesterday was our last day, which was a half-day hunt until noon. The last weekend we run hunts we do this to allow us to be able to pull spreads. We had all of them out of the ground by 6 pm. We made quick work pulling the more than 12,000 decoys over a 70-mile … [Read More]