It's been at least 15 years since I have duck hunted and over 40 years since I have goose hunted. And I've never shot in a field, just on the water.

Was out deer hunting with my buddy on Saturday, shot three deer (they are easy to see with the snow). In the middle of the day when we were driving between properties my buddy calls his friend and mentioned we had seen a few geese flying over on another property nearby. His friend is really into waterfowl hunting and has a son that is a full time hunting and fishing guide. Well several phone calls back and forth between the friend and his son who lives a couple hours away in Pennsylvania is loading up his truck for an early Sunday morning trip to Virginia for some geese. He's got a couple of guys learning to be guides that are coming along too so they can get some experience guiding others.

Both my buddy and I have VA hunting licenses, so I get on my phone to check for duck stamps, turns out the VA Hunting app allows us to buy them, so I buy us each federal and state duck stamps while we are sitting in the truck.

My old 870 had a short barrel on it for home defense, had to dig around in the basement to find my 26" barrel, found some steel shot down there too. I couldn't find a plug so I grabbed a dowel and cut it to length.

Sunday morning at O dark thirty we meet up with everyone. The young guides in training are doing most of the work setting up the blinds, my buddy and I help setting out the decoys ( they brought 240.)

Everything is set up and I'm pretty impressed, but I still don't think we will get any geese, we were in a hay field, covered in snow, that I have never seen a goose in, weather is clear and cold, not seeing many geese flying.

About 9:00 it warms up the geese start moving. Still not many and they look like they are all following a path about a mile away. Those young guys start blowing on their calls and flaggin, pretty soon we got geese coming in. I have to say I was a bit rusty and missed a few at first, but then I connected with a couple. They had a lab that would run out and retrieve our birds. We ended up with 7 birds from 5 shooters. Not a lot by any means, but given the conditions and how few geese were actually flying, I was really impressed. Had a great time. About 11:30 things just seem to stop, not a goose in the sky. So we pack up and head to a little local diner for a late breakfast.

Now this little diner is where my buddy has been going to have a late breakfast when he's out deer hunting for the last 20 years (our deer season in this county is 7 months long, no daily or season limit on deer, but you only get 3 bucks). All the locals know him, the owner knows our coffee and breakfast order as we walk in the door. But we have 7 of us this time. We sit down at a big table in the back and are reliving our glory of the hunt. Suddenly this older lady we've never seen before in the back corner says "I got too damn many geese on my place". Turns out she's got about 40 acres with a nice pond on it, that's not frozen over, and she would love for someone to come over and get rid of some geese. Our season up here ends on Friday, and we will be there on Friday to shoot some more geese.

Oh, and the lady said she has too many deer and turkey on her place too. We got a late antlerless deer season that goes to the end of March. We will probably get rid of a few of them for her too. And there is spring turkey season coming up too.

That sounds like full freezers and a great time!

Love these kind of days- no idea what to expect. Congrats….now that’s hunting!!