The 2009 season began with high expectations and ultimately it ended up our being our best season in Missouri and our second best overall. Our Missouri hunting started with a bang on Feb 13 with a 90 bird field as the first snow storm of the season moved through the Mound City area. We did have some slower periods as every year does but overall hunting was good. March 11 wasn’t what you would consider a typical good day to hunt snow geese. The day started out very cold. However the combination of a reverse migration of birds from the north due to a snow storm in SD and a large migration from the south sandwiched Mound City from both ends and the hunters piled them up. That day we crushed our previous high field record of 154 with a 216 bird day and a total harvest of 588 snows between all of the fields. Both of these are bests for us. The rest of the Missouri season remained good hunting until we moved to SD.
When we moved to SD we thought we were hitting it perfect. The leading edge of adult birds had already moved into ND and there were still birds scattered as far south as Missouri. Then a major snow storm hit pushing all those leading edge birds right back to us. Although there were a lot of birds in the area hunting success was below average the first several days after the storm. The second week hunting picked back up with a few above average fields. High field in SD was 80 birds.
Our 2009 total harvest was 5471 geese. Five fields approached or exceeded the 100 bird mark. Two 90’s, 145, 147, and 216 bird days. Low field for the year was a zero. We shot 22 leg bands, 3 neck collared birds, and one $20 reward band.
