A Sunny Day on the Yellowstone

Author: Bruce

Reacher and Vio resting after their goose hunt on the river

​“It was a Friday afternoon, early November, and waterfowl were just now concentrating on the big river as our puddles and small water developed ice.  But the river was open, minimal ice.  It takes serious deep freeze to lock it up.

I’d noticed a gravel bar about a half mile upriver was pulling in good numbers of roosting Canadas.  

There’s a riffle leading to the bar that looked traversable from our side of the river, and birds moving up and down the main channel pass right over a deadhead, a debarked cottonwood washed down from last spring, positioned just before the gravel beach where the birds were concentrating.  An ideal, ready made blind.  But hunting it would mess with the concentration of birds, and maybe send them up or downriver, away from us.  Right now they were roosting a half mile away, and the sugar beet fields they were feeding in were just a half mile in the other direction, also on our side of the river.  And there is an island smack dab in the middle, and it borders the main channel, and river ice isn’t risky for the dog…not yet.  So the island is where we went.

I  meant Vio, a seasoned yellow.  She knows her stuff.  At heel all the way, no ruckus.  But the same can’t be said for Reacher, a five month old Brittany.  He’s learning the ropes, and absolutely full of “PUPPY”!  But they both had their collars on, and I hoped this would be a positive learning experience for Reacher.  

We set up on the main channel side of the island, in some willow, and I found a nice back support bank edge with the warm sun on my back.  Even the pup settled down.  It was mid afternoon, and I was packing my old spanish 10 gauge, side by side.  The safety was acting up….where it would switch from off to on whenever I shot the first barrel of the two trigger gun.  It had just happened and I figured it was still safe to shoot, but did restrict me to a single shot.  But I loved the gun, its balance, and its just the ticket for reaching out for pass shots on big canadas.   As I thought about it I wondered whether the same thing would happen if I shot the tighter choke second barrel first?  A simple experiment.   All I needed was a cooperative bird, ideally one directly overhead and within range.

Moments later a single honker can be heard making its way upriver.  Right overhead, but a tall shot.  

I push the safety off, and swing through…remembering that old adage, “speed is lead.”  The second barrel’s tighter choke made the difference.  The bird buckled, and then drops.  Straight down!  “Oh Shit!” I’m thinking, as this ten or eleven pound cannonball plummets towards the three of us!  I’m thinking maybe I can knock it to one side with my barrels if it’s going to hit the pup.  Vio and I can take care of ourselves.  It’s the hapless pup I’m thinking about, as the birds flashes down.  

But it works out, and the goose bounces off cobble ten feet to our side.  Vio looks at me as if to say…”you call this a retrieve?”  But she does take three steps over and lifts the bird up, with Reacher attached, and drops it at my feet.

I checked the safety and it had stayed off.  So for now, this means I’m shooting the tighter barrel first.  Can do.  

A short while later a small cluster of four birds comes at me from upriver.  These birds are closer, and present a good shot.  And I’m really motivated to collect another bird, to even out the gambrel for the precipitous uphill climb to get home, which is a quarter mile away but includes a hundred plus foot ridge to clamber up.  

Another single falls, and lands nicely twenty yards away.  Vio does her thing, and I’m all smiles now with my balanced gambrel!

It’s still two hours until sundown.  I’m thinking “boy, this is a blast!”  Rarely do we enjoy good pass shooting in such mellow weather.  I sit there basking in the sun as the river flows by.  A cluster of five mergatroids drift by.  More fly over just two feet above the water.  These are big birds, maybe a bit larger than a northern mallard, but I’m not interested.  Hard to make them palatable.  But then a pair of green heads buzzes me, but I’m not ready, and pass on a marginal shot opportunity.  Still, they quicken the heart rate.

I can hear geese coming my way…heading upriver.  This is a flock, maybe sixty birds, and they line up nicely.  Right overhead.  Off with the safety, swing through, lined up with the string of birds, focussed on a big one three back from the point.  “Boom”, and I see a bird falter, then start dropping.  And amazingly, the bird beside it also folds!  So I hold off with the second shot.  Limit is five, but I’ve got a hill to climb!

Both birds fall within twenty yards of us.  Not much of a workout for Vio, but she has to be told about the second bird.  I give her a line and she heads off ninety degrees in the wrong direction.  It takes her about two minutes to swing through cover though and she finds bird number two readily.  On the other hand, taking a line needs work!  

It’s still an hour and a half of legal light.  Do I hold out for a limit?  One more bird?  Or is now the time to head in, with full light and fortyfive pounds of geese to lug, not to mention a seriously heavy side by side and assorted gear?  A younger me might of stayed put.  But I’m just a ten minute walk from a refreshing finger of bourbon?  I head back, and am really pleased to see Reacher handle the river riffle we need to cross with minimal hesitation.  He almost has to swim to negotiate it, and I am hoping he becomes water friendly.  I’m wishing for a resilient and versatile bird dog, capable of filling in for a seasoned lab.  He’s already had a good number of pheasant shot over his points, but we are a mixed bag hunt here, so waterfowl are almost always on the agenda.  

My good friend and seasoned waterfowler Frank has owned Brits for years now, and Reacher comes from that line.  His thirty-five pound Pete retrieves geese from the BigHorn.  He even has Pete trained to fetch his bourbon!  I’m serious.  Anyway…that’s another story!​It was a Friday afternoon, early November, and waterfowl were just now concentrating on the big river as our puddles and small water on the "mainland" developed ice.  But the river was open, minimal ice.  It takes serious deep freeze to lock it up.

I’d noticed a gravel bar about a half mile upriver was pulling in good numbers of roosting Canadas.