Holidays bring back hunt memories Last-minute Christmas trek particularly special

Over the run of about 20 years during the 1980s and ’90s, my dad, his longtime hunting and fishing buddy Gerald Jones, my cousin Steve Hitchcock, and I made about 30 trips to Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Some of the fastest and most dependable Canada goose gunning in the U.S. could be enjoyed there, the limit was four birds a day, and Maine offered limited honker hunting during those decades. We enjoyed the camaraderie of several extraordinary guides, shot from some huge and very unique pit blinds situated in among breathtaking scenery, and reveled in the never-ending flights of geese and swans winging about.

Aside from the exceptional shooting, the Eastern Shore is renowned for remarkable restaurants and especially touted for its wonderful seafood recipes. It became a running joke whether our Aroostook County quartet kept visiting Maryland for the fowl or the food. In retrospect I’d call it a tossup, great days of gunning and relaxing evenings of savory seafood. Dad and Gerald have passed on to the ultimate great outdoors, but Steve and I often spend a lot of time together enjoying a wide variety of woods and waters exploits, and of course reminiscing. Not a holiday season passes that the two of us don’t hearken back to a very novel and rewarding goose-hunting foray for our foursome.

Let me tell you about it.

An early gift

Christmas fell on a Sunday that year, and as everyone knows the week before is a madhouse of cooking, shopping, gift wrapping and delivery, parties, and a dozen other hectic but cheerful Yuletide activities. When the phone rang just before noon exactly one week prior to Christmas Day, I was surprised to hear the very distinctive growl of Pete Henry’s voice. Pete runs Eastern Shore Guide Service, a large and very successful outfitting business in Queenstown, Md., that we had been using for several seasons. What I assumed was a holiday call offering season’s greetings turned out to be a very special early Christmas present.

A last-minute cancellation had left a slot open for three days of shooting on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We would have one of the top guides, Pete assured me, and as icing on the cake, he related that waves of geese were being pushed into the area by cold weather in the north. Almost every one of his two dozen parties was enjoying great gunning and many full limits each day. I knew about the bitter cold front; our entire state was suffering through it.

Hordes of honkers, warmer weather with no snow on the ground, and fine food were all tempting pluses, but notice was short and the four of us would have to be on the road the next day. On top of that, coaxing our better halves to cut us loose Christmas week, arriving back home just ahead of Santa, was going to be a hard sell. Perhaps we could call it an early Christmas present! I asked Pete for a two-hour window before he called another party. He agreed, and I thanked him for thinking of us first.

First things first: If I couldn’t go, there wasn’t much use getting the others worked up, so I coaxed, cajoled, whined and wheedled, and pushed the early gift idea with my wife. It worked! She shook her head and rolled her eyes at my antics, but she’d learned long ago the burdens of being married to an itinerant sportsman and gave her blessing to the trip. Within an hour I had called and then gotten back positive responses from Steve, Gerald, and Dad and immediately phoned Pete to confirm our hunt.

Since we were to be on the road at 6 a.m., the rest of the day was a blur of locating and collecting gear. Fortunately, our previous gunning visits to the Eastern Shore prepared us for just what we needed. In predawn darkness with each breath puffing like smoke from a flue as the thermometer hovered in the low 20s, we methodically but quickly stuffed guns and gear into the trunk. When not one more box of shells or goose call would fit, we manhandled the trunk lid closed and gratefully retreated to the car’s warm interior for the 12-hour trip.

Surprise, surprise

It had been a long day followed by a short night when the alarm sounded, but we shrugged off the weariness for the excited anticipation of Maryland goose gunning. As I was donning camo clothing, Steve went to check on the boys in the next room, and I heard a very colorful oath as he opened the door. Maine had followed us to Maryland and 4 or 5 inches of pristine snow covered everything. In a dozen visits over several years we had never had snow and, in fact, during many December goose hunts had gone to the blinds in short sleeves or at most a light jacket. Now it was my turn to issue a few colorful phrases as I changed into more and heavier clothing. Our first surprise of the day was not a good one, and since geese don’t like getting out and about in snow and cold any better than humans, it didn’t bode well for the day’s shooting.

At the restaurant where all of Pete’s Eastern Shore clients meet to have breakfast and get their guide and blind assignments each morning, we got our second surprise, and this was a dandy. Our guide for all three days would be Joe Bacon, and although we had met him during previous visits, we were never fortunate enough to hunt together due to his enormous popularity. Joe was the ultimate guide: courteous, experienced, a good sense of humor, lots of stories, used only his own personal set of very realistic Big Foot decoys which he set up and took down every day, and – oh, yeah – Joe was the world champion goose caller from the previous year! Even if the wet, white weather did dampen our spirits and the goose gunning, to watch, hear, and learn from Joe’s calling efforts would be worth the trip.

Forty-five minutes later, after a hearty breakfast and introductory conversation with Joe, our team was unloading and setting out decoys around a long, comfy pit blind in a harvested cornfield. We had only the truck’s headlights and a couple of flashlights for illumination, but as we finished our spread the first cool, crystal strands of dawn were creeping over the horizon. Joe hid the truck and returned to make final adjustments to the decoys while the four of us transferred our gear and ourselves down into our special underground hide and loaded up for anticipated action.

Before joining us, Joe used a heavy broom he had lugged from the truck to clear of snow three car-size patches around and among the goose decoys. He then kicked up some dirt and threw some unharvested corn leavings on the dirt. Upon joining us Joe explained that with a flying honker’s exceptional eyesight and high vantage point, these bare spots in the otherwise white landscape would show up like a penny in a pile of dimes. As the sun rose we could all feel the temperature rise as well and knew by day’s end most of the snow would be gone. In the first half-hour after sunrise, usually prime time for goose gunning, we never heard nor saw a single bird.

Honker hotspot

We passed the time seeking calling advice and practicing under Joe’s world championship tutelage, and it was very evident how and why he won the heavily contested title. Into the second hour I was getting a bit antsy, however, and wondered aloud why no geese were moving. “Have patience,” Joe said. “It’s still too cold and nasty, but we have a roost pond only half a mile over that hill, and when the temperature goes up, so will the birds.”

Not 20 minutes later a small line of geese appeared over the far hill and Joe began waving an attractor flag. A small group broke away, winging toward our setup, and soon we could faintly hear their plaintive cries. Steve and I began to blow simple “hail” calls and our guide began a sweet serenade that proved irresistible. Six big honkers came at us as if on a string, wings set at 100 yards, feet down at 50, heading for the center bare spot among the dekes. “Take ’em,” Joe barked at 25 yards with the half-dozen birds ready to touch down and slid back the blind cover. All of us stood and shot, and four geese tumbled, and then Gerald and Dad fired at the fast-fleeing pair and not a goose got away.

Since three of the four spouses had stipulated that if they agreed to this last-minute trip, we’d better not come home without the main ingredients for a roast goose Christmas dinner, we were now safe to return to Maine. Before Steve and I could retrieve our downed birds and get back to the blind, Joe had spotted more geese in the air. In just over an hour, our troop had its limit of 20 Canada geese and was packing gear and guns and picking up decoys, and flocks of geese were still arriving, wanting to land on the only bare spots of ground for miles around.

The most amusing part of the day was yet to come. Driving back to the motel at midmorning, we listened to the radio and observed roadside businesses in disbelief. All of the area schools were closed, many restaurants and stores had posted big “Closed due to the storm” signs in their windows and traffic was nearly nonexistent. We laughed and laughed and wondered what the Maryland minions would do if they experienced a Maine snowstorm instead of just a few inches of powder. We decided it’s all in what you’re used to.

That evening we enjoyed a meal fit for royalty at Oxford’s The Robert Morris Inn, which thankfully was still doing business but not very crowded due to the weather. Built in 1710, the Inn’s dining area is separated into several colonial style rooms, many with their own fireplaces. Among the delicious fare we sampled were crab cakes, crab soup, oyster stew, a broiled seafood platter, and a pork loin with oyster stuffing. The perfect end to a perfect hunt.

By our third day all of the snow had disappeared, temperatures were in the 50s, and the geese flew steadily each morning to stuff themselves in case more cold weather might arrive. We hunters stuffed ourselves each night – we were also worried about a storm, and that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! We enjoyed great shooting, wonderful company, and free calling lessons that many sportsmen would pay dearly for. It was a wonderful Christmas holiday and we still arrived home, Yule dinner in hand, before Santa started his Christmas deliveries.

Here’s hoping your holidays are memorable, too.

Outdoor feature writer Bill Graves can be reached via e-mail at bgravesoutdoors@ainop.com