Well the August 15th goose opener in North Dakota is officially in the record books. Despite a lot of concerns over heat and mosquitoes, I can say I only swatted a handful of skeeters in 3 mornings and typically we were out of the field before 8:00 a.m. so heat wasn’t an issue.

After 3.5 days of solid scouting and hunting, I feel I’ve learned A LOT about goose hunting this early in the year (mid-August). Here is what I noticed about hunting this time of the year:

1) The birds are still in the “family mentality” this time of year. Even though we found feeds of around 300 birds or more in a field, the family groups typically stayed to themselves. When watching a field, they wouldn’t normally land into other family groups, but off to the sides or in another part of the field altogether.

2) There was still a lot of MIA birds in the areas I scouted. I went back to the scouting grounds I hunted since the beginning of the early season and the numbers were down dramatically. This may be because there was birds that still were unable to fly, or the nesting numbers were down in those areas.

3) There was very few small grain fields in these same areas, and they typically mostly consist of small grains. More corn and beans then ever before which wasn’t surprising given the ethanol boom. Also, the majority of the fields still weren’t harvested.  However, the large rains that came earlier in the week didn’t help speed up the harvest by any means.

4) The birds in the western part of the state seemed to be more ahead of those in the east. The geese were on the nest earlier and the birds appeared to act more like September 1st birds. By this I mean the feeds were more condensed and they were more in a flock mentality rather than a family group mentality.

In our 3 days of hunting we had some pretty good gunning, but only a handful of the flocks really finished down the landing zone like we were hoping. Most of the flocks were swinging over us at about 15-25 yards as they were trying to land well outside the decoys. So for next year I expect those hunting in the east to expect more of a controlled pass shoot then actually hunting “in your face” birds.

But it was fun to get out in the field again and to hunt my old stomping grounds that I haven’t hunted in 4 years. If they do another mid-August season next year I will definitely changing my approach.