World of a goose guide: Thousands of miles of driving, freezing weather, 3 a.m. alarms
We watched intently as our guide, Nate, worked his black lab retriever, scooping geese that had fallen far from the decoys. A short, high-pitched blast on a whistle and an exaggerated arm motion to one direction or the other, and the lab responded like he was connected to a remote control, balling up a cackler goose in his mouth and returning it to his master.
During the pre-hunt safety briefing, Nate warned us that the fine for accidentally shooting his dog was $25,000, and we wouldn’t leave town until the money was secured. Otherwise stranded amid the dusty Texas Panhandle, this threat was genuine.
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No one would blame him either because not only was this lab his trusted companion but also Nate’s livelihood. Well, the dog and a trailer filled with another $25,000 worth of decoys.
Nate is among a troupe of freelance goose hunters who follow the annual waterfowl migration down and up the middle of America for nearly nine months each year, hiring out their expertise to various outfitters and their clients along the way.
They're passionate folks, each fellow I've met a high-powered young man whose choice of gig work blessed him with being more well-traveled and capable in the outdoors than I can ever picture for myself.
But this brand of waterfowling is tough work. It's a cycle of 3 a.m. alarms, setting hundreds of decoys and blinds, enduring clients of various skill levels, retrieving birds, re-packing hundreds of decoys and blinds, cleaning and packaging dead birds, gas station lunches, afternoon scouting efforts, rinse and repeat.
Why suffer the struggle? Sure, the call to adventure is appealing, but goose hunting itself is a wildly addicting pursuit that demands excellence and adaptability.
Most species are sharp critters that agonize over decoy spreads and blinds when you need them just a bit closer for shotgun duty. Flocks quickly shift between feeding locations, and there's often a feeling of being a day late. This makes guides like Nate worth their money.
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And, truly one of the great spectacles of North American hunting comes from chasing geese. Snows, in particular, organize into flocks of tens of thousands, and their whirlwind flights across open agriculture fields are mesmerizing.
In the Central and Mississippi Flyways, the show hits the road in early fall, hunting first in Canada before reaching their wintering fields in Texas and Louisiana. Once the regular season concludes in late-January, the Spring Light Goose Conservation Order begins, an extended affair through May intended to reduce snow goose numbers that are diminishing their summer habitat. The guides then head back north through Arkansas, Missouri, South Dakota and Saskatchewan before the birds pass the timber line and return to the tundra.
That evening, Nate visited camp having scouted birds for the next morning, but we called it off with temperatures forecast at just above zero and two 12-year-old Florida boys in tow.
He hung around for a couple of beers, admitting he’d be happy for the rest. That snow goose season was starting soon, he explained. After the birds retreated for the summer to the Arctic Circle, he and the lab would finally drive home in east Texas, after thousands of miles of burned tire tread, to a newborn daughter he’d not yet met.
I finally drifted off, thinking back on the morning’s hunt, nervously contemplating my son saying afterward that he wanted to be a goose guide.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: The world of a goose guide: 9 months of a backbreaking chase
