Afternoon Snows

**Ron Zega** · #1 04-21-2009, 07:35 PM

Date: March 20th, 2009

Location: New York

Sunrise/ Sunset: 6:40 / 7:25

Weather: Warm and sunny

Temperature: 30/50

Wind: 5-7 from the North

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, Frank Clifton, Arliss Reed, and Avery® Pro-Staffer Ron Zega

Journal Notes:

All week long, we had been reliving last weekend’s hunts over and over again in our minds, the birds were here big; big at least by New York standards and the gang of us had 4 days to go after them. We had formulated a plan during the week, Murphy and Frank were going to scout Thursday night and Friday morning, and Arliss and myself were going to meet up with them mid-morning on Friday and head to the field. Everything was going according to schedule, Murphy and Frank had figured the birds out pretty well, and with good migrating conditions predicted we didn’t waste any time getting set up.

But…. It went as it usually does when you are trying to hurry up, and we had flocks of snows working us before we had even gotten the 4-wheeler out of the field. We all pitched in, got the rest of the spread out as fast as possible, and not even 10 minutes after we closed the doors on the blinds, we were pulling the triggers on the first flock of the day. That day most of our shooting came from 1:00-3:30, and we had a few flocks of young birds decoyed perfectly. We had a small flock of adults come in about halfway through the hunt, and upon retrieval of the birds, discovered a band on one of the birds that Arliss had shot! Recovery data told us that it was banded on Bylot Island in 2006. A great start to our second weekend chasing spring snows in NY.