1st Goose Hunt

1st Goose Hunt

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Josh Mills takes his son on the first goose hunt ever.

About a week ago, my son came to me and he said, Dad, I think I'd really like to try goose hunting. Well, he's nine years old and he's not officially hunting yet. But to have him say those words made me very excited because as a father, I'm doing my best to not try and push it too hard on my boys… that all I want to do is hunt and fish. So when the oldest boy came to me, who is nine and said, that looks really cool, dad, I'd like to try it out. So I called my buddies who are really exceptionally good goose hunters and have all the right gear. And I said, hey, can I bring my boy? And you can just sit in the blinds with us. And I had everything laid out the night before. I got him some food and we were out the door by 3:15, met the boys and got to the field. I really wanted to make sure he saw everything. We made him, brush his blinds and with stubble and weeds and made him set out the decoys and really see the whole experience. And thankfully, the guys, they know where the birds are at. And he had three or four different, really good flocks come over. One of the funniest things as we went out to pick the birds, because we dropped five out of one flock and he picked up on one goose and it wasn't quite done.He says, Dad, what do I do? What I do is like, hold on, buddy. But he got to see some of the challenges. When 200 birds landed in a field 200 yards away after three, four hours, we were able to take a count. We bag 10 Canadian honkers out of a limit of 16. So it wasn't great, but it was good. And he got to see everything. And then, of course, this week we worked our way through smoke in the breath into jerky, which turned out fantastic. And he loves that. And seen that connectivity between the hunt and turning it into nourishment is a big point to me.

The perfect way to mentor your kids.

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