I had to wake up around 3:45 AM so I could make it over the Bay Bridge to Kent County, MD by 5:45 AM. I was pretty tired as I simply could not force myself to sleep before 10 PM the previous night. Anyway, I got to my friend Mike's house and we immediately set out for the farm we were hunting. We arrived at a little pond on the farm property where two side-by-side blinds had been built. Several hunters in high-quality, full-camo gear were setting up dozens of goose decoys in and around the water. In addition to the yellow lab owned by Mike's friend Chuck, there was going to be 9 or 10 of us hunting, of which three were part of a family that had driven down from north of Philly. A goose hunting license permits 2 geese per person, so if it turned out to be a good day, we'd have maybe 20 geese to bring home.
Sunrise came up soon after we all got settled in the blinds. Three of the guys were designated spotters and goose callers. Once someone saw some geese flying towards us, eveyone who wasn't a spotter was supposed to hunker down in the blind, cover up with a ceiling of straw and evergreen branches, keep our heads down to prevent the geese from seeing our pale faces, and wait. Once the geese got close enough, the spotters would start going off on thier goose calls like nuts. Actual geese sound pretty ridiculous all on thier own really, but grown men blowing goose-call horns are hilarous. I had to supress my laughter most of this time while I tried instead to focus on the cue for us to shoot. The birds would circle in for a landing as they became more interested in this apparent flock gathered about the pond below. Once the birds were comitted to land in the pond, and were within shotgun range, someone would shout, "Now!" and we'd all pop up through our roofs of straw and spruce and start BLAM BLAM BLAMing away, all in one hopefully fluid motion. Most or all of the geese would fall from the sky and into the pond. As soon as Chuck let her, Stormy the labrador would jump out and fetch the birds from the water. This really great kid named Clinton had some chest waders, so he would walk out into the pond to help Stormy when needed.
The first group of birds to come in were right over our heads and I didn't see them soon enough to aim in for a shot before three or four other guys did. However the second group to come in was just a pair of birds, which landed in the water far to our right. Since I was in the right-hand most blind, me and the guy next to me took a shot at each of them. The one I hit is featured below.
note: the "birds" in the background are actually the decoys
As the day went on, the groups of geese coming in became larger and more frequent. I think I shot one more bird but it was harder to be sure as we were all shooting at the same time and often at the same bird, or at least at the same tight cluster of birds. It was noon by the time we met our limit, so we gathered up the decoys, took some pictures and left. Mike took me to a local game butcher. This in itself was actually very cool. It was basically just a garage with four people working inside. I walked in and put my birds in a bin and made a tag for each, the short guy at the first station grabbed the birds, chopped off thier heads, feet, and wings with an axe, and then rubbed the bodies all over this giant spinning wheel of rubber fingers - the feather-plucking machine. The bruises and scabs all over his popeye forearms gave me the impression he did this all day long. The woman at next station gutted and cleaned the birds in a big sink and I think the guy at the third station was the owner. He did all the fine trimming and packaging all while maintaining a clever stream of chit-chat with everyone waiting for their birds. A fourth guy ran the register and helped out at each station that ran slow. From start to finish, it only took these guys about 5 minutes to transform my dead birds into a cut of meat like you'd see in the supermarket. Defintely worth four bucks each considering it probably would have taken me about an hour or more to just pluck a single bird.
Anyway, one of the geese has been sitting in a pot of salt water and galic in the fridge overnight. I intend to roast it today. I'll let you all know how well it turns out later.
Update: Roasted goose is delicious. It is entirely unlike the dark meat of a turkey like I expected. It is much more like really tender red steak, like filet mignon. I now have a new favorite cut of meat.
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