Eastern Montana Goose Hunting Trip

Late season goose hunting on the plains of Eastern Montana is one trip I spend all year looking forward to. As primarily a big game hunter, I don’t get as many days in a blind as the next waterfowl hunter might. But I always make room on the calendar for a goose hunt that has become tradition, and one of my favorite hunts of the year. 

Waterfowl hunting is a welcome change of pace after a long season with a tag in your pocket. You may hunt with a close friend pursuing big game, and there might be a camp of other hunters to share a tent or fire with at the end of the day, but field hunting for geese has a social aspect to it that just makes it downright fun. Snacks and coffee go up and down the line like a baseball game, spare handwarmers get passed between frozen shooting hands, jerky recipes are compared, and a hell of a lot of laughs are shared.

Constantly switching from calling birds (personally I leave this to part to better callers),  actively hunting plus lulls in the action leaves a lot of room for self-entertainment. Of course, on a good day it’s all said and done in an hour and you’ve got a table at the diner before they’re done serving breakfast. But on the days when you have to stay out and hunt longer into the day to shoot your birds, you typically end up with periods throughout the day when it’s just a bunch of hunting partners killing time in a field around a bunch of fake geese until some real ones come around. I’ve even been known to doze off and be woken up by the loud honking two blind down.

It comes with its challenges, as many good hunts do. How long you'll be out there ranges widely and isn’t known. Sweating during the flurry of work that starts the day is downright dangerous for sitting still in single digit temps the rest of the day. “Warm” becomes a relative term. And some days, the birds just don’t fly the way you planned on, or the wind switches, or the field of real geese across the way draws all the birds. 

At the end of the day, with a generous bag limit of five birds and thousands upon thousands of Canadian Geese traveling through the flyway, this hunt is one that usually has us coming home with plenty of meat for some fantastic recipes. Pastrami, spiced hams, confit and stews. There’s a lot of potential and yield geese have to offer.