New Jersey Opener

by Zink Calls
September 4, 2008

Labor Day weekend found myself and Avery Pro-Staff Relations Manager Rob Jepson heading north on the New Jersey Turnpike to meet up with friends for our annual opening day hunt. Over the last three years, fellow Avery Pro-Staffer and owner of Storm Outfitters (stormoutfitters.com) Dave Weidner and friend Larry VanKirk, have set aside September 1st to hunt together. This is the season opener for the New Jersey Resident Goose Season. Besides the opportunity to shoot a few birds, this is a great opportunity to share some laughs and share some stories of our past summer adventures.

Rob and I arrived in New Jersey on Sunday afternoon. After a quick stop at Harry's & Navy Store to pick up our license, we visited Dave at his home. Being the gracious host, he had the barbeque grill hot and the drinks cold. We shared some great food and a lot of laughs. We put together a preliminary plan for the morning hunt pending the evenings scouting report. Dave had put a lot of time on the road scouting over the last few years but as anyone knows, "striking gold" during the September Resident Goose Season is sometimes a hit and miss proposition, because the geese will change their pattern with no apparent reason. As Dave got on the road to complete some last minute scouting, we got settled into our hotel room.

Sleep was hard to come by that night not unlike a child on the night before Christmas. My excitement was brought on by just the thought of another opening day and the good times ahead. Even after 30+ years in the field, my enthusiasm is just as high as my first day hunting with my dad.

We were met at the hotel by Larry. After a quick stop for some coffee and water, we headed to the field. Dave kept the decoy spread small with just a few dozen decoys set in small family groups. The groups were set loosely in a sprouting rye field. No matter if you are hunting the first day or the last day of the season, you need to use your scouting information to dictate the set up of your decoy spread. With the decoys set, we worked on hiding our layout blinds near a ditch that had about 12-24 inches of weed growth present. Even though this was the first day of the season, we wanted to make sure our hide was perfect. You have to remember, even thoug there are a lot of young birds most of them are being lead by adult birds that have survived several opening days. With our blinds stubbled to blend into the surroundings we were ready for the first flight of the morning. It was a short wait. As the sun was clearing the eastern tree line, the first flight of geese appeared. As Dave started flagging, Rob, Larry and I started calling. With a quick circle of the spread, the first flocked dropped into the decoys. Unfortunately, the lack of wind allowed the birds to finish off to one side rather then the "Kill Hole". We managed to scratch down a few birds. There was little to no wind blowing first thing in this morning making it a little more of a challenge to put the birds in the "Kill Hole". After Dave's Lab Twister made a couple of quick retrieves, we were ready for the next flight. I am sure Dave had a lot of mixed emotions about the opener because this was his first season in 9 years that Storm his trusted retriever, companion, and the mother of Twister was not at least sharing the field with them. Dave had to make the most painful decision that any dog owner has to make by putting Storm down after she lost her battle with a very aggressive form of cancer. So, today's hunt was dedicated to Storm. We had one more toll that morning that we were able to scratch a few more birds out of before calling it a morning. The morning hunt had netted us seven geese which is not bad when hunting unpredictable resident geese.

With our spread picked up and stowed in Dave's trailer we made a bee line for the Americana Diner. For anyone that has at least driven through New Jersey, you know there is no shortage of diners. After a breakfast of cinnamon French toast and reliving the mornings hunt, we started putting together a plan for the afternoon's hunt. It was a field that Larry had permission to hunt and Dave had scouted the evening before. Dave had viewed several flights passing over our field heading towards a cut sweet corn field to feed up for the night. The challenge of the hunt was that we were not on the "X". Our plan was going to convince the geese that they did not want to go to a fresh cut sweet corn field that they had been using the last few days but to the hay field that we had permission to hunt. We got our spread set up at the high point in the hay field. This would give us the greatest visibility to geese heading to the sweet corn field. I can honestly say that this was the first time that I had ever goose hunted in shorts and a short sleeve shirt. For the first hour, it felt like I was lying on the beach near the ocean instead of in a field hunting Canada geese. As the sun started to set in the West, we say our first flight of geese approach from the East. They were locked in on the cut sweet corn field. Unfortunately, their approach did not take them over our field. Dave aggressively flagged them while Larry, Rob and I started calling. These geese quickly disappeared below the tree line heading in the direction of the cut sweet corn field. At first, I thought we were done, but Dave continued flagging and we increased the intensity of our calling. The birds started to turn then locked their wings for our spread. The geese stayed locked on our spread for the next 100-150 yards as we continued our calling and flagging. When Larry called the shot, the birds were back pedaling 15 yards in front of our Power Hunter blinds. We quickly dumped six geese out of seven. After quickly retrieving the geese we settled back into our blinds. Twister did not make the afternoon trip because the hot dry weather is really hard on retrievers. We had one more flock give us a fly by but the allure of the cut sweet corn was to strong for them and they landed in the sweet corn field. We could have pass shot them but what fun is that? Finishing the birds is where the fun is for me. Shooting is just secondary.

As the sun started dropping below the horizon, we started picking up our spread and packed it out of the field. We finished the day with 13 geese which is well short of the 15 geese per day per person. In my opinion, numbers are not important. Do I like shooting geese? No, I love hunting geese. In my opinion, hunting is the combination of setting up a rig, calling, flagging and reading the geese but more importantly sharing the experience with good friends that make up the entire experience of goose hunting.