Hunting Snows at the Kenmare Goosefest

I'd arrived in Kenmare late on Thursday night. This year, we were going to be competing in the Kenmare Goosefest, and we were feeling the pressure. Not only was this the first time hunting the competition - and we were competitive and determined not to get skunked - but we were the first all-girls team to enter the goose shoot. We absolutely could NOT get skunked.
 
But others were feeling the pressure as well. I spoke to one of my teammates, Dani, who'd been up during the week to scout. There were hardly any geese in sight, and everyone was preparing for a tough shoot. This certainly wasn't ideal for a group of girls who were unfamiliar with the area, and relatively new to goose hunting. These thoughts ran through  my head as I pulled up to Beer Bob's in Kenmare and shut my engine off. Then I heard it, and I smiled.
 
I could hear them clearly - hundreds, maybe thousands, of snow geese that had settled on the refuge for the night were honking loudly. It sent an electric shock through my body. The honking sent an air of anticipation over the small town, and it resonated even stronger inside the bar where teams were discussing their plans for the next morning.
 
"Yep, they started coming in the last few nights," my Uncle Jerry said. He would be taking me out the next day scouting the next day, but I was hardly prepared for what was to come.
 
We got up early Friday morning and started driving north. I'd never seen mass groups of snows migrating, but I searched the horizon for the "V" formation I was used to seeing with Canada geese. It wasn't until I pointed to the horizon at what appeared to be a thin string of smoke curling up into the air and asked Jerry, "Why're they doing a controlled burn now?!" that I realized I'd been looking for the wrong thing. Jerry accelerated. "That's not smoke! That's snow geese!" My eyes widened. There must've been thousands there. I felt the excitement from the night before well up again.
 
But we weren't the only ones. We were shortly joined by several other pickups all racing toward the cloud of geese that were now swirling above a field. Some were already circling the field like vultures. Not only that, but the land was posted. Chagrinned, we continued on.
 
The rest of the day continued about the same. Whereever we saw a large cloud of geese, we also saw they had plenty of company. We went back to town for the afternoon and I waited for another of my teammates, Cheryl, to join mefor the evening scout. When she came, we headed west to see what we could find there.
 
With a better idea of what we were looking for, I scanned the horizon, and Cheryl and I stopped occassionally to glass a field, finding only small gaggles. We stopped in Lignite and Cheryl visited with some friends in the area to find out what they'd seen. It wasn't looking good. It seems they hadn't come this far over, but we continued west toward Noonan. We were nearly to the edge the western hunting boundaries when I saw it again, and barely choked out Cheryl's name as I pointed. Again, on the horizon, hundreds of geese were swirling up like smoke from a fire, then coming immediately back down in the neighboring field. Another large gander was flying just a few more fields over. We drove closer, careful not to spook the already cautious geese. We found the landowner for the fields where the geese were landing to feed, and with our spirits, high, we went back to Kenmare.
 
We celebrated with our other teammates that night at the Calcutta, even brushing off remarks from one of the other teams that scoffed at the thought of an all-female team. If only he knew!
 
Cheryl and our other teammate, Mikey, stayed in Lignite that night and agreed to get up early to make sure we secured our spot. I woke up at 4 a.m. after hardly sleeping. I could hear geese outside and the cooing of nesting geese was already growing into loud honks. My face must've said it all as my aunt smiled at me. "Cool, huh?" was all she said.
 
Dani and I dressed and drove to the South of the Border to check in and pick up our checker. We were tired as we made the long drive to Lignite, and Dani was a little anxious, but I reassured her we wouldn't be skunked. As we pulled close to our hunting spot, Dani saw the refuge, nearly solid white with geese. Her anxiety vanished. "Oh! Tessa!" was all she said.
 
The sun slowly rose as we finished setting up our spread and settled under our cover. We could hear the geese grow louder. It was foggy, and the geese would be flying low. Even if they didn't land, there was a good chance we could pass shoot them. Suddenly, the refuge erupted with honking, and we watched the fog closely as the honking grew louder and louder. We made out a few white shapes through the fog as they flew over us.
 
Our excitement ebbed slightly, however, as we watched a white car pull up into the prairie trail between us and the refuge. They hundered down in the tall grass next to the fenceline, and stood up and fired as geese flew over, taking down several geese before the remainder of the flock flew higher to avoid the surprise. We realized quickly we wouldn't see any action and hurried to the fenceline, surprising the two hunters as we did. "Sorry!" they said. "We didn't see anyone there!" Looking back at our spread, it was concealed in fog. Since they weren't in the goose shoot, we asked if we could join them at the fenceline and they graciously accepted. "We were about done anyway," one said, motioning to a pile of geese. We thanked them several times before they drove off and we slid down into a ditch shrouded by tall grass to wait for the next group to fly over, again growing excited as we listened to the honks grow louder and louder until suddenly their white shapes were over us and our shotguns rang out. A few geese dropped as the steady honking grew panicked and they flew higher in a frenzy.
 
We stayed there for a few hours as group after group of geese flew off the refuge, and some, already done feeding, were coming back. Each time, they sent a thrill through each of us as we heard them approach, growing louder and louder and appearing through the fog. But they weren't the only ones coming toward us, and it was not long before were also joined by several other teams who'd given up their spreads to pass-shoot the geese as they flew over the fenceline.
 
Finally, the groups of geese were few and far between and with the feeding hours now over, we collected our seven geese we'd managed to hit and called our checker. After driving around to find any geese left out feeding we could sneak up on and some puddle jumping, we headed back to the weigh-ins with our geese. Although we had hoped to get so many more of the hundreds of geese that we'd seen on the refuge that morning, we were pleased we hadn't been skunked as so many other teams had. And we had another victory awaiting us when we got back: the team that had scoffed at an all-girls team the night before was among those who had come back empty-handed. We enjoyed a celebratory beer as we chatted about the hunt. Seven geese were not so bad after all. It was a strong showing by the first all-girls team at the Kenmare Goosefest.

By Tessa Sandstrom