‘Snow’ storm!
Year’s first goose hunt produces fast shooting
Everyone except the designated photographer had a limit by 6:30 a.m., but the specks kept coming. We watched them flutter in like giant snowflakes for another hour.
It was the first goose hunt of the year organized by federal magistrate judge Joe Volpe of Little Rock. The party was a familiar group that included Mike Rainwater and Bob Sexton, John Hout, Anne Marie Doramus, Jim Harris, Kirk Lane and Steve Burroughs, a letterman for the 1983 University of Georgia football team. Nick Posusta, owner of Eagle Head Outdoors, was the outfitter.
Some goose hunts are dice rolls. An outfitter sets you up in the vicinity of geese with the belief he can call them close. Often you’ll get enough for a small group to scratch out a limit of two geese per hunter.
There were no doubt that opportunities would be more plentiful on Monday between Carlisle and Stuttgart. If the limit had been 20 per gun, we could have gotten it easily.
The group convened at about 5:30 a.m. Posusta had to play traffic cop at first. The landowner would haul grain out of the fields that morning, and Posusta had to make sure no vehicles blocked the road.
From there, it was a short ride in UTVs to a makeshift blind at the edge of a field. Posusta gave a short safety briefing that basically instructed everybody to have a 10-2 field of fire, to refrain from shooting at anything on the ground and to shoot only when he gave the order. Posusta is familiar with this bunch and was confident in its competence.
As the eastern sky melted into a molten canvas of purple and mauve, a thick fog swirled from the ground like a prop in an English mystery novel. Hunters settled into their seats and uncased their guns amid a whirr of zippers and clinking plastic clasps.
“Five minutes to legal shooting time,” Posusta announced. “You can start loading your guns.”
The distinctive sound of compressing springs grated like fingernails on a chalkboard as hunters thumbed shotgun shells into their magazines. One by one, actions slammed shut as they chambered the day’s first rounds.
“It’s legal shooting time!” Posusta announced.
The geese got the message at the same time. The first wave arrived almost immediately. With a handful of geese hovering over the decoys, Posusta shouted, “Take ‘em!”
The gun line rose in unison and fired a quick volley, bringing several geese thudding to the ground.
The gunfire aroused a vast air force of geese about a mile away. Blaring a deafening squawking din, they rose like a cloud, leveled off over the fog and thundered directly to us. Posusta and his assistant Blaine Perkins arrested them with their skillful calling. Soon geese circled the decoys like water swirling around a drain.
As soon as a suitable number were about to light in the decoys, Posusta called for the shot. Geese rained to the ground. Most were juvenile specklebellies, or greater white-fronted geese, but a few snow geese were in the mix, as well.
The second volley nearly filled the limit. After ascertaining who shot what, Posusta designated two hunters who had only killed one goose to each shoot one goose each from the next group. The next group arrived quickly, and the last two hunters adroitly completed their mission.
After collecting those birds, I asked Posusta if he could call in one more group so that we could enjoy the show. We all sat awestruck as the geese formed the tornado for which they are famous.
I sent a video to a friend in California with this note: “Autumn on Arkansas’s Serengeti.” She forwarded it to her husband, who at that moment sat in his office overlooking San Francisco Bay tending to matters of profound legal gravity.
He would much rather have been with us.