Hello winter!

     Last weekend Ryan, a friend of ours Kris, myself, and Duchess embarked on another swan hunt to Freezeout lakes near Fairfield.  Last year during, our inaugural season, Dad was with us and we got two swans along with a few ducks and had a great time!  Kris is a die hard waterfowler so it seemed to be a no brainer to invite him to this years event.  Ryan was the only one of us who had drawn the swan tag but we knew there would be plenty of other birds in the air.  As the week drew longer and I kept a watchful eye on the weather, my excitement grew with each day.  Our first winter storm of the year was moving in and I just knew it was going to get some birds moving!  Freezeout lakes is one of the major fly ways for all of the migratory birds heading south for the winter, one of which is the snow goose.  When the snows migrate through they do so by the thousands and it usually happens in about a weeks time.  In all the years I've hunted there I've never timed it right, with the weather starting to work in my favor I just knew this was going to be the year.
     Ryan and Kris met me in Missoula and we loaded Duchess up and headed north.  The weather had already begun as we traveled on icy roads nearly the whole way!  We got to Fairfield just before dark and when we pulled out to the lakes all we could hear and see was geese!  It was just as I had imagined it, the sky was littered with snow geese!  My excitement was short lived however as I noticed that nearly all of the water on the lakes had froze already, there was a small patch of open water on the main lake still which meant we still had a shot.  So we headed to the hotel and made a plan to come back in the morning and sit as close to the open water as we could all day and see what happens.  You can't really decoy swans in so your only shot is to set up near the water and hope to have one pass by within range.
     Sunrise brought with it single digit temperatures and snow!  We bundled ourselves up for the day and headed to our spot.  We were not even fully set up yet and six swans flew right over the top of us, Ryan was caught completely off gaurd yet somehow got off two crack shots with his ten gauge as they flared away.  We quickly settled in for what we all knew was going to be a great day!  As the day went on the birds kept coming, we got a few chances at passing ducks and geese, Kris capitalized on a shoveler in one group so we didn't get skunked.  The swans appeared to be growing wiser as the day grew longer however and Ryan got a few more shots but each one was either too far away or too surprising to bring anything down.  Most of the birds would come in from behind us with no sound at all so by the time we noticed them it was already too late!  The most heartbreaking part of the day for me was that I had finally got to Freezeout when the snows were there, I was just a little too late as all of the birds were too high in the air.  We literally saw thousands of snow geese and canada geese, but with the water all mostly frozen they were coming back form feeding in the fields too high to shoot at.  It was still a remarkable sight to see though.

      We headed for the truck at dark with our one duck and our minds full of birds, the temperature never did get into double digits so we were all ready for a hot shower and a good meal!  Even though the water had all disappeared we decided to give it one more shot in the morning and when we woke up to -17 degrees we knew we were in trouble!  We all had a pretty good idea what our chances were of even seeing any birds on a day like this, but we bundled up and headed out anyway.  It only took an hour and a half and two small flocks of honkers so high in the air we could hardly tell what they were for us to decide to pack it in and head home!  The first leg of the trip home was fairly quiet as we all pondered what had just happened, then just like any good hunter we immediately switched our thoughts from what we could have done different this year to what we will do different next year!  I know we may not have brought home a lot of birds, but I'm sure we all brought home enough memories to get us through until next year!

Remember, all hunting trips are more beneficial for the time shared with friends and family than they are by the success of the hunt!