The 2010 spring was a challenging season. We intentionally shortened it so I would not be away from my small children as long this year. Unfortunately during this condensed timeframe the weather was less than ideal. We postponed about a week’s worth of hunters giving us even fewer days in the field. We ended up only hunting 21 days. Most years we hunt 40-50 days. There were bright spots. High field was 140 birds with a number of 40-70 bird days. Total harvest was 1890 geese. Nine of the geese wore leg bands.
Up North Outdoors guide retrieved this blue goose for his hunters on his ATV that I nicknamed the “rut cutter”. I have never seen an ATV that threw mud like his did.
My guide Cory with a band he won in a drawing on a South Dakota snow goose hunt with the other Up North Outdoors guides.
Snow Goose Migration
Party from CA with a successful day in the field.
South Dakota snow goose hunt. Fifty-one birds shot this day.
You will never out guess the spring snow goose migration. The geese were very late arriving to Missouri in 2010. There were some birds but in very small numbers so we cancelled a couple days of hunts. With nothing better to do the Up North Outdoor guided decided to hunt one of these small pockets we had found about 3 hours from Mound City. We arrive to that area just about day break and it was very apparent that a large number of geese had moved into the area overnight. We gained access to a field and set the snow goose spread for an afternoon hunt. We shot 53 snow geese as birds poured from the south all afternoon. That evening I was back on the phone telling hunters we were back in business. We had a very successful last week of February and it turned out to be the best hunting we had in 2010.
A screwy end to a screwy season…the last day we hunted in Missouri. The skies opened up and we shot 140 birds. The next day it snowed 10-12″. The weather was very cruel to us on our 2010 snow goose hunts.
Happy hunter with a game strap full of snow geese.
Snow Goose Band
Owner Tracy Northup enjoys a day in the field hunting snow geese with the other guides after completing the extremely challenging 2010 spring season.
