Goose Hunt (continued)

We went back and sat inside the blind in hopes that we may get another set of birds to come in, I was praying that we would so my friend could get another chance at his first goose.  About forty five min later we saw a fairly large jag of geese out on the horizon, at first we thought nothing of it, two min later however those specks were growing at an ever increasing speed.  I remember thinking to myself “please let these birds be it”.  My dad and myself began calling and flight split into two, half stayed on the course that they were on, while the other half veered off sharply to the right (our left) and started heading right for our spread of decoys.  I once again pulled up my shot gun onto my knees to get ready to shoot.  Then, perhaps out of sheer excitement, my friend jumped out of the blind to shoot.  The birds were still out of the Seventy yard range of my shotgun, however at this point it was all or nothing because they had already seen us.   I fired three times, they were just too far to hit.  The excitement wore off quickly and we realized that he and I jumped out too early.  As we walked back into the blind, the question of whether or not we would get another chance was running through both our heads.  No one spoke for about fifteen minute, then my friend spoke up and said “man, I’m sorry for jumping out so early”.  I instantly replied, I said that “It’s alright, it happens to everyone, I’ve done it to”.  I told him about the first time I jumped out early “I had gone goose hunting with my dad and one of my uncles; we had called in a jag of geese, just like my dad and I had earlier that day, they came in, I ran out of the blind, I shot, missed”.  It was one of the more embarrassing things I’ve ever done. 

            The rest of the day was really slow; geese usually fly between 7 am and 10 am and it was now 10:30 and no one had heard or seen birds for the past 45 minutes.  My friend was still wired from his 5 hour energy shot earlier that morning I decided to take a nap while he sat up and watched for geese.  Eleven thirty came around and we still hadn’t had any geese come within more than two miles of us.  I had planned to try to get out of there by 12:00 because I had set up to drive down state later that afternoon, I decided to stay till one though just to try to get my friend one more chance at getting his bird. 

            12:30 rolled around, still no sightings of geese.  It was getting late, my dad and I made the call to pack up.  While he left to go get the truck, which we had stashed under some trees, my friend and I started to pack up the decoys.  No sooner had we walked out into the field , than a jag of geese appeared above the tree line in front of us.  We stopped what we were doing and went over to the front of the blind.  Crouched down, I started to call and the geese began to come down then, they cut away just as quickly as they had appeared.  The big black Chevy Silverado had appeared in the fields.  There was no chance at getting any birds in now. 

            As we packed up two more sets of geese came up over the tree line and instantly veered off to the right.  It’s funny how hunting works like that.  Any time you have failed to limit out it seems like the skies open up right around when you’re leaving.  I always leave wondering “what if we had stayed fifteen more minutes?  Would we be going home full”.  Every time I have to tell myself that the line has to be drawn somewhere and maybe next time we’ll stay that extra fifteen minutes.