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Goose hunters from Minnesota
Tisdale - Friday, October 18, 2013
by:Timothy W. Shire

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For many years this group of hunters and sometimes more than one party come up from the Twin Cities area of Minnesota to go goose hunting in the Tisdale area. This group of five brought along a trailer behind two pickups and with them the necessary gear to set up an all weather camp from which to carry out their hunting expedition.

It takes some team work and considerable organisation to put together a project like this and over the years they have refined the gear they bring along with them moving from a slightly smaller army tent to this large walled tent with a dry room extension on the back. Cots and sleeping bags are what we usually consider part of a campsite but these folks take it a good deal further than that with two heaters that are controlled. They also included some tables, chairs food preparation equipment and as you can see in the picture below they wired their tent for electricity with on of their group being an electrician.

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The town dropped off a portable biffy at their campsite in the McKay Park east of the playground and they set up a portable shower with hot running water. Just looking over the extensive amount of gear they brought along the level of organisation and planning is really remarkable.

This fall the migratory arctic geese are later coming to this area then usual. Though we have seen them along highway six and in the Wakaw area the monstrous flocks that will drop into this area are just bait later then in other years.

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Minnesota has lots of lakes and areas where hunting can take place but it also has a significant population and the really large flocks of arctic migratory geese stick very closely to their flyways which are well west of Minnesota. These geese like to travel considerable distances and return to the same resting sites each year. This part of Saskatchewan is in that flyway and the geese overfly the boreal forest just north of us and then set down in the parkland to rest and get ready for their next leg which is an equaly long trip hopping over the Dakotas before come down to rest before their final flight to the gulf area.

I was shocked to discover these massive flocks when I first began flying over Saskatchewan. In the southeastern part of the province where I grew up ducks by the tens of thousands flew by but geese were rarely seen since their flyway was to the west of us. But the shock I experienced was to discover that these flocks pretty much own the air space at two thousand feet above the ground. During the migratory seasons spring and fall pilots from Yellowknife to Houston know that you need to maintain at least five thousand feet at all times and still keep a very sharp eye open from “V” formations.

This group of hunters will be here for about a week more before they two head south for the winter.

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