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My hunt on Saturday went down the tubes too but Sunday was better, here is how it went for us. The 300-400 geese on our lake have been feeding in some nearby fields. I have been watching them all month and glassed them in the fields on Wed, Thur and Friday prior to the opener. The landowner had never goose hunted before and he and his friend went along for the opener on Saturday. I was very excited and spent Friday night touching up paint on my geese dekes. I should have cleaned my gun. We set up in the same spot I had glassed the feeding geese the days before. I couldn't believe what happened. All the geese took off from the lake and flew a path south away from us to some other fields. They never left the lake in that direction all month. Nobody spooked them on the lake and all we could do was to watch in disappointment. We set up in the same field that afternoon hoping for a return to the previous pattern of geese in the fields in the afternoon around 4PM. Once again, no geese came our way. I guess the warm day changed their pattern.

I almost went to another spot on Sunday but decided to try the same field again in hopes the geese returned to their normal pattern. It was just the owner and I on Sunday, his buddy wasn't too motivated after our poor hunt Sat. He should have went, the geese came to this field as they had been doing all month. The only bummer was my autoloader was sticking on the first shot and my friend who hadn't wingshot much was having a hard time hitting them. We missed the first flock but I dropped a bird from each of the next 3 flocks with my single shot. My friend was missing and I wished I could have got a second and third shot off. We had a lull in action and I decided to go home for my pump gun, bad call Ed. While I was gone, another flock came in and my buddy dropped one but he crippled it and it ran for the lake across the street from the fields. My buddy couldn't catch up and the bird made it to the houses and the water and got away. He wasn't sure what to do and didn't pursue the bird after it left the field. I got back and we made one last search by the lake for his bird. We didn't find it by shore but he later recovered it by boat that afternoon. While we were doing that, another flock of about 8 landed in our decoys which we flushed out of range heading back. That was it for the morning but it was a fun hunt. My gun got a thorough cleaning that night. Here's a pic of my 3 geese. I see you had snow on the ground Sunday, it didn't hit over here until late afternoon.