These are our early years and we didn’t keep the records or take the pictures that we do now. You may also notice the decoys are not nearly as realistic. It was before I partnered with Damian Kuzmin to start our decoy company Deadly® Decoys, Inc. There have been a lot of advancements in snow goose hunting since the Conservation Order began. Harvest during these early years were 3653 (2005), 3583 (2004), 1266 (2003), 1049 (2002), and 469 (2001) snow geese.
I didn’t keep track of band totals on most of these early years. Bands have never been a real priority of mine. My obsession is the working birds. It took several years of guiding to realize just how crazy some of you hunters are about bands. Leg bands are on about 1 out of every 200-300 snows. In these early years neck collars were more prevalent. In 2001 we shot 1 red neck collars and 2002-2005 it was 3-5 collared birds per year. In 2006 or 2007 they stopped putting collars on snows. Those are also the years that we shot the most collared birds. After that the number we recover each year has dropped off dramatically.
