Prairie Sportsman

Welcome to the Prairie Sportsman, I'm Bret Admunson, and what we're doing today is not for the fainthearted or the weak-willed. It's late season Canada goose hunting. We're in the Fergus Falls area with Cory Loeffler from the DRC Call Company. You like to hunt this time of year, don't you? Late season's the best season, say it all the time. You bet. This time of year, this is one of those places that you have to go to hunt, because the water stays open here. Yep. Water stays open, the birds have a safe place to roost in town, and then they come venturing out of town to feed, and that makes for some really good hunting opportunity outside of town. We've got a little sandbar, late season sandbar set up, so we've got a few decoys, some sleeper shells. We've got some full body decoys out on the sandbar in river. Well there's a lot of geese staging up in town. We're bundled up, we're set up, ready to go here, we're gonna watch the decoys and see if we can't trick some of these Canada geese into coming in. You bet. One of the things about hunting late season like this, is sometimes you're waiting all day. A lot of times when geese are on the only open water in the area, because everything else is frozen up, they'll wait there until the warmest time of day, and then they'll go out and feed once. That's why you dress warm, you bring a little heater along, and you could be in for the long haul. (goose call) He is coming, he's coming. Whenever you want. (gun fires) There they are. Give me the gun, Jim. (laugh) They were right here. And that's what can happen sometimes. You can be sitting around just waiting for it to happen, and all of a sudden, boom, they're in front of you, you don't have shells in your gun, you're trying to load shells, you're dropping them in holes in the snow, you can't find them, pulling your sunglasses off, finally get it all loaded up, the geese work perfect and then you miss. (laugh) It's perfect. (goose call) All right. (gun fires) Yeah, T! Oh, teamwork! Took us four shots. Boon's already on him. (dog whistle) Come on, come on, good boy. Good boy, come on. Come on. (dog whistle) Over, over. Over. Come on, here, here. Come on. Come on. Good boy. Over. Good, good. Good. Here, here. Come on. Good boy, here, here, hey. Come on. Come on. Come on. -

Bret Narrating

The cold temperatures made river hunting a challenge. The dogs fought the frigid water and ice shelves that were built up around the edges. Conditions that are best suited for seasoned dogs who've dealt with cold, fast-moving water and ice. You got it? (goose call) This pair still coming, three to the right. On him? Yep. Get him. (gun fires) Boon's already on one. Hey, get the bird. (instrumental country music) Want her to go after it? I don't know. I think she'll be all right. Good. Send them both over there. Maybe they can help - Mika! Hey! Gonna get swept down -- Mika! Right here, jump. Come on. Come on. Come on. (whistles) Come on. Got it? Come on. (whistles) Hey, go on. Come on, come on. Here, here. Drop it. Drop it. Good girl, get up here. -

Bret

So bands are like trophies for waterfowl. Waterfowl hunters take these bands, they wrap them on their lanyard, and they provide valuable research for biologists and waterfowl researchers. -

Bret Narrating

And while hunters will recognize most metal leg bands, they may not know what the brightly colored narrow plastic band is on Cory's lanyard. -

Bret

That's a tarsus band? Yeah, so what they'll do with this one, it's a marker band that you can read fairly easily with a set of binoculars or maybe a camera. So they'll put a metal band on one leg, aluminum or stainless steel, and then they'll put a plastic band on the other leg, and then you can come up, walk up to the goose maybe with a spotting scope or with a camera with a zoom lens, binoculars, and then you can read that letter number combination. So this would be a red band with white writing. And then the code is letter M eight eight zero. And then you can turn that in and tell them, "I saw this goose, he was alive at this location," and they'll send you a band report and you get it back. It's kinda neat. (geese honking) -

Bret Narrating

Cory is an experienced goose caller, has won the prestigious title of North American Goose Calling Champion. But it took years of practicing and motivation to get there. -

Bret

What got you into hunting geese? So when I was about 14 or 15, my uncle took me goose hunting. And took me with a few of his friends and I was blowing a goose call and practicing on this old thing that was laying around, and I thought I sounded really good on it, and I was pretty excited to bring that goose call out hunting. And they said, "Nope, leave your goose call back in the truck." They wouldn't let me bring it. So I got pretty mad, I got pissed off. I practiced and kept on practicing, and I got better and better and next year, two years after that, they told their other buddies. They said, "Nope, you guys leave your goose calls back in the truck. Cory's gonna bring his call." So then I basically felt like a world champion after that happened. So that was a big step in my goose calling career. When I was finally accepted in the goose caller of the group. -

Bret Narrating

He's taken that experience and turned it into a successful calling career that led to him creating his own line of goose and duck calls called DRC Calls, based in -- Minnesota. Those are the calls we're using today. (goose call) One of the most important aspects of waterfowl hunting is your hide. You know, how well you're concealed. Well sometimes that concealment keeps you from getting to shoot. (goose honking) That's all right, Cory's got me covered. (gun fires) Got up to shooting, all I had in front of me was a tree thing. Oh yeah, they were right there, huh? Yeah. Come on, come on. Come. Good, hey, hey. Hey, here, here. (upbeat techno music) Here, in here, come on. Here. Where we're sitting here on this river, we're on a peninsula and the river bends all the way around it, so that goose landed in the river and it's floating downstream, and we're just walking to the back side of the peninsula here. We're gonna let it float around to us and we'll send Mika on it here in a second. I'm gonna wait for her to see it. See it? Get bird. (minor rock music) Get bird. (dog barks) Good girl. Good girl. Fighting that current. Good girl. Good girl. Good job. Good girl. You can see how cold it is out there. Just what a good job these dogs are doing, because it's cold. You can see this goose floated around that peninsula and already all the water that's up on top of it is all frozen. She's all iced up on top. Well Cory I gotta say, this is definitely one of the more unique hunts that I've been a part of. I would say that shooting one bird down here on the river would be like shooting ten up on the hill out of a pit, so this is my favorite spot to hunt. Yeah, a lot of times you think of goose hunting you think of field hunts, out of layout blinds, corn stubble, things like that, wheat fields. A setting like this is definitely not something you get to be a part of very often. Late season like this, open water, some of them are new birds to the area, so they work a little bit better sometimes. But we got cold fingers, cold feet, cold dogs. We got to see some great dog work today. Yeah, and you know it took a little bit of teamwork from the dogs to make a couple of those retrieves, but it was impressive. Well can you blame them? (laugh) They could use a little bit of help, it's - we got some more geese coming at us right now. We got a three pack, let's get on 'em. (goose call) Call back, yeah? Ready? Yep. (gun fires) Just like that. Limited a geese. Cory, thank you very much. Hey, good shooting. That was fun. I was ready to back you up. I appreciate that. Normally I need it. I even had a bullet in there. That always makes it easier. (laugh)