Ellsmere Island Snows

**Ron Zega** · #1 04-04-2009, 07:53 PM

Date: March 16th, 2009

Location: New York

Sunrise/ Sunset: 6:45 / 7:20

Weather: Warm and sunny

Temperature: 30/45

Wind: Calm

Equipment Used: Avery® Power Hunter blinds, GHG® Ground Force blind, Avery® Finisher Blind, GHG® T&T Snow Goose Shells, Avery® Floating Gun Case, Avery® 6 Slot Decoy Bags, Avery® Guide Bag, Avery® DIY Lanyard, Avery® Power Flag, Avery® Field Caps, and Avery® Fleece Skull Caps.

Hunters: Rick Murphy, Rob Vellucci, Arliss Reed, and Avery® Pro-Staffer Ron Zega

Journal Notes:
2009 marks the first year that snow goose hunting has been open in New York past March 10th thanks to a “Conservation Order” passed by the USFWS and accepted by New York DEC. This Conservation Order has provided us New York waterfowlers 30+ more days of Snow goose hunting, and many more opportunities to do such things as buy snow goose decoys, make e-callers, take the plugs out of our shotguns, get frustrated, and have a bit of success hunting Snows.

We had some great success hunting with a few other friends on Saturday and Sunday, and since some of us had a few hours to hunt on Monday morning, we decided we would give it a shot. The four of us got setup on top in a high picked cornfield in an area with a lot of snow goose traffic. This particular morning, we had one good sized flock of snows working the decoys well, and being that we are all new to snow goose hunting, and can get a bit antsy at times, we decided to take the low group of 3 birds instead of waiting for the rest of them, The “bird in hand” theory. Not long after, a few thousand snows landed in another field not more than a mile from us, from then on the game was basically over; except for when a pair of adult snows came a little too close on one of their swings. We dropped one bird in the decoys, and the other sailed for a long ways, before crashing out of sight behind a rise in the field. Turned out to be another example of why you ALWAYS make an attempt to find all downed birds. Murphy and “Coot” made the ¼ mile retrieve, and sure enough the bird was banded! Recovery data told us that is was banded on Ellesmere Island in 2007.