On the Cover
To the untrained eye, it may seem as though the cover photo is of John E Stone V sitting in a field looking towards a large pond on a beautiful sunny evening waiting for some snow geese to fly in for some fun shooting and yummy snow geese jerky. However, that is not exactly what is happening here. What is really happening is John IV and John V are protecting the fragile arctic tundra!
"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service implemented ths Conservation Order to reduce numbers of snow (including their blue color phase) and Ross's geese because these geese have increased in number and are causingdamage to the fragile arctic tundra." -Waterfoul Hunting Digest 2015-2016
So we have been trying to do our part to protect our fragile artic tundra from these
crazy tundra destroying snow geese. There is no limit, no plug in the shot guns and plenty of time (February 1 through April 30). So we have taken out exactly zero. Yup, zero. We've been out twice in February and have seen them and shot at them and went home empty bagged.
Still it has been a great fun time. The first time we have about 15 minutes because we went when Dad got home from work just 45 minutes before sunset. We brought our trusty plastic bag (which was almost white) and our 12 gauge Remington 11-87 shotgun and walked and sat. The first group flew straight at us as we walked and caught us off guard. Dad shot and almost hit one with the wadding. The next time we were also unprepaired and they flew over again, turned and flew away from us.
As we sat with the wind blowing our snow goose decoy plastic bag, an American Bald Eagle flew right as us, seemingly thinking the plastic bag would make a great evening snack. It flew in at us and got within 20 feet of us! It was awesome. By then the sun was setting and if you noticed in the list of things we brought a flashlight was not one of the items. We started walking out at dark.
The next time we went out with the whole family. We brought Mommy, Matthew and Adam a blanket to sit on like a picnic and set them back away from where we would be hunting where they could just see us shoot some lovely snow geese. However, the two groups of snow geese that flew over us were too good of flyers to be shot by our shotgun.