03/30/2012
Wow.....what a spring! It was unreal how warm and dry it stayed the whole month of march in SD. If felt like mid-april when we made it out there on March 12th. The geese moved through earlier than anytime I have seen and even the old-time farmers never remembered a spring this soon. Unfortunatly I did have to cancel all hunts from the 30th on. We we just running low on geese. We probably could have killed a bunch on the weekend.....but it was too much of a gamble for me to take. I didn't want anyone to come out and have the geese all move out that day. All deposits will be returned in full.They will be in the mail tomorrow.
The good news is that the 14 days that we hunted......we pounded the geese in a bad way. It was by far and away our best spring ever in SD. We killed over 1.200 geese with a daily average of 58 geese per spread. (1/2 days combined to equal a full day). It was so good I was afraid to post any reports. No need to let others hone in on a couple of areas we were hunting. We had three days where a spread killed over 100 geese and our new SD high of 154. On our record day we killed 112 b y 8:40 am.
Our lowest full day in a spread was 17.The main reason we did so well is because we moved a lot and stayed on the geese. We hunted 16 different fields and the longest we were able to stay in any one field was 3 days.
Overall it was an excellent spring for us in both Arkansas and SD.2013 will be our six season of providing some of the highest quality snow goose hunting anyone will ever experience.AS usual I like to tweak things a little bit each season.We are going to keep the same time frame we hunt in Ark. In SD we are going to hunt the middle of March to the end of March.....with a "floater" week the first week of April.Every other or third year the first week in April in SD provides the best hunting. When conditions are right we will want to stay out and stack them up.
I am also going to change the minimum for your own field in SD to six. Move it the same as it already is in Ark. I will be talking with my guides next week and see what else if anything we may change.
As usual...returing hunters will be given first choice on dates and I will start booking new groups on May 1st. Minimum group size until Jan 1st 2013 will be 4.
02/29/2012
Just made it back home at 6am today. Sure feels different. Left Arkansas while it was 60 and sunny and drove through a blizzard here in MN.
Our Arkansas season was our best ever. Our hard work and planning paid off. We had good to great hunts the whole time we were down there. A couple of slows days....but thats snow goose hunting. I just ran the numbers and we ended up having 23 hunts and killing 1,355 geese for a daily average per hunt at 58.9 geese. We had three days over 100 and a couple more that were pretty close. I expected we would do good....but with the huge increase from other spreads down there this year.....its amazing to me that we were able to consitently kill so many geese.
I plan to relax for a few days....do some rice planting here in Palisade.....go through the blinds and decoys....and head out to SD around the 12th for our first hunt on the 16th. Looks like enough snow has fell over there to at least make things a little muddy. Hopefully no floods this year!
02/23/2012
With just five hunts left our Arkansas season looks like it will be our best ever.....by quite a bit. Not sure exactly why we are killing them so good and consistently....but whatever it is we are just going to do the same thing.
So far we have had just two poor hunts...a zero and a three...and have set our new daily high of 165. Our average should be over our last years high daily average of 50 geese per spread per day.
If SD is anything like Arkansas has been this year.....it should outstanding.
01/27/2012
Just returned from Arkansas from a week of hunting the flooded timber. Ducks were around in pretty good numbers,but they were getting a little difficult to kill. We were able to kill ducks everyday and most days limits or close to limits. I would say ther ducks have been there awhile and had been shot at a few times.
I did have a cancellation from a party of 4 for our Arkansas snow goose season.The days that I have room for up to 4 hunters are Feb. 10th,11th and 12th. I also have room for a couple of hunters for Feb. 17th,18th and 19th.
In South Dakota I have room for 2 hunters form March 26th-29th and April 6th-8th.
01/01/2012
Happy New year!!
2011 brought some changes in my life,both personally and professionally. In the middle of Feb,while in Ark, I was informed that my belonging were packed up and in the garage. Talk about stessful.
I was able to concentrate on the spring snows and with the help of our outstanding guides we had one of our best season ever. We averaged just over 50 snows per morning in Arkansas and South Dakota was in the 30s per day inspite of terrible hunting conditions.
In May Somehow I was able to land a job and a place to stay at the Mallard Club near Palisade MN.It is something that I have really enjoyed. Managing habitat and farming is hard work but extremely rewarding to me. I did have to basically give up my guiding in Western Mn,but I am very happy with my decision.I am going to be here next summer and fall and hopefully for many more years. I already have plans on what others crops we can add to the buffet of wild rice.
My sole New Years resolution is to post right here more often. I have not been posting as much as I feel I should.
As far as the 2012 spring snow goose season goes.....I am basically fully booked for both Arkansas and SD. I have a couple of days open in early April in SD and thats it.I have spent a lot of time trying to decide if I should go bigger...ie..more guides and spreads.....but I am going to stay with my original intent of having the best service possible. I feel that anything more than two spreads makes that goal hard to achieve.I may be foolish to not try and maximize income....but somethings are more important than money.
2012 full steam ahead!!!
