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It was our last day goose hunting in Wisconsin as a group on Sunday, December 14, 2008.

Our season closed on Tuesday, 12/16/08 so we decided to give goose hunting one more chance before the end.

We planned not to arrive to the field until 8:00 am since we hadn’t been seeing geese until well after that time. To our surprise, across the road, there were about 200 geese already in a different field.

Thanks to the farmer for going out and shooting his two birds as he got the birds moving. Otherwise we would have never even had a chance on getting the birds to take a look at us.

The first group comes in we drop two birds of nice size.

The next group of four comes in and I drop a ten plus pounder on the other side of the road in the farmer’s field that is about 300 yards away.

I said, “I know I hit that thing why didn’t he fall?” As we are all watching the four birds fly away, he folds up and spirals out of the sky. Luckily the farmer knows us and I was able to enter his property to retrieve the bird.

All of this takes place before 9:30 am. We have a couple more flocks fly by, but nothing wants to finish for us, so we don’t shoot.

One guy of the four pulls at noon and the rest of us stay. By 12:30 pm, we have more birds working that we know what to do with. They all slide to the west of us and I’m thinking, "#$%&", we should have shot. I sit up in my layout blind and what do I see; a lone goose about 15 yards walking in our decoys and honking at us. I yell to everyone there’s a goose standing in our spread. The other two guys pop up, and once they do that, the goose takes off. I shoot and he falls to the field, gets up, and then flies a second time. I shoot again, he falls again, and this time is rolling around on the ground.

My buddy sends his ten year old springer to retrieve the bird. Fritz gets about 20 feet from my blind and I see the bling on one leg.

I yell, “It’s banded” like a little school girl!" This was my first goose band!

My buddy grabs the goose from his dog and informs me that it has two bands. I am now jumping out of my blind running to see it. He tosses me the bird and as I’m looking at it, I read, “REWARD $100.”

Again, I yell like a school girl, “It’s a $100 Reward band!”

Now we are all out of our blinds and high five’n each other.

What’s the first thing we do? We call the guy who just left and told him what had happened. He drives back to check it out.

Once I got home, I took a couple pictures and called in the band information and this is what I got for the band information:

Information about your bird:
Band number: 1028-16899
State/Province where bird was banded: Ontario
Date banded: 07/27/2005
Species: Canada Goose

So, my first goose band ends up being a double band with a $100 reward on it. That was the way to end the season for our group in Wisconsin, on a high note, with a great group of buddies!