EARLY SNOW GOOSE CRUSHING ... Claudio Ongaro's Hired to Hunt Season 5 Episode 2

The all adults snow flock rolled in much earlier than usual this year which was cause for ongoing concern that would set the tone for the rest of the season. I managed to coax a bunch of adults snows into the decoys while the rest of the team is dealing with spotting under less than ideal conditions. The birds are doing funny things this year giving Mel grief with some Canada geese on his hunt. The weather gods are definitely mad at us. I'm Claudio Ongaro and I take people hunting. I woke up one

day as a 27 year old schoolteacher and said to myself, "I'm gonna build a hunting lodge". That was in 1994. Now I lead my dedicated team of guides for 63 days each fall exposing my clients to some of the best waterfowl hunting of their lives. Controlled chaos, epic hunts, across five million huntable acres. We are Hired to Hunt. have an interesting situation here with some specs and a bunch of adults knows that showed up so our morning hunts went very well Jeff I think ended up with 32 geese a

ll hawkers Darryl has 13 honkers in the limited duck so I'll take his guys in here what's interesting is we got a bit of a front rolling through or have a front rolling through so the geese are some of them are bedded down they don't really want to go to roost the ones that are going to roost and roosting right in a fairly substantial pond in the field and they're trading back and forth I don't think there's a lot of grit in there so they may end up going back to another pond where they go for g

rits so I'm just gonna watch these for another hopefully they go back to roost and you know half an hour so I'm just gonna babysit him put him to bed and they know Darryl's on his way back you know back to the lodge and he's gonna button those guys up get them fed I know Jen's Jen's got lunch ready to rock didn't because cold front he were just gonna get the hunters right back out and get him hunting because you never know when they decide to fire income feet so we want to definitely be undernea

th them came up right in front of us smiled at us man and I blasted three each yeah and he just flew away didn't even get touched wait wait a couple do that today to be a garden that's all good to Deeks Deeks had a good day and it rained on us things got pretty muddy he decided to change his color I don't know he's not really looking too yellow right now but just been hunting non-stop lots of fun lots of limits lots of birds awesome dog work good shooting poor shooting just just water fell hunte

r that's best it's been awesome I love it we're gonna put alright hate to say this about 1100 inkless lemon at 1111 hoes stick him in the gun this 550 on each rack all right we may not put them out off bird start coming we quit okay so we're gonna do this we put the blinds one two three four five and I'll be right here okay basically to run kind of a really long J with a short side Arrowhead up top just to funnel the birds in and then here though we're probably run a white salt-and-pepper leg he

re and it will taper off with a bunch of white and then we'll go salt and pepper all through here lots of dark lots of white ones around us and then and then on this side I think we'll go just about all speckle bellies and then all run family groups on the inside okay I'll lay out a perimeter and then you guys stretched out though the grounds gonna be really hard to fit so dry cool so basically we have got about 5,000 specs and snow's feeding in here with some ducks some candidates two insignifi

cant number but watch him feed here until 12 I went in got a quick bite to eat came back and about quarter to 1 they finally went all back to roost which is good you know let's let's hopefully we can kill 25 specs and to Canada's and a bunch of snows if we can it would be good so that's the skinny right here guys for peel it off hang on hang on big plate of weights on the deck guy just hold tight only this is a tough decision if the 5 do it we may go on them get ready yeah we'll probably the goi

ng it's a perfect hold tight hold tight hold tight hold hold hold hold get ready food plate is on ready boys get ready reload real quick load quick load when we maybe couldn't let them go around again but they're adults load quick load quick sled on the right coming back guys be patient we may have to let him shoot past let him go by letting go fight it too hot let him go around nice see that's how they're supposed to do it guys haha putting that beautiful look single guys single load up load up

right side row drill drill drill go good boy there you go that one made us work for it ah that was cool boy and off this is a pretty big pot of honkers right here the specs and ducts are farther out in the field but it's almost worthwhile targeting these I'm sure the rest will come to us but they're not when I say Canada's cuz they got white cheek pouches but there's a flight of lessor Canada's in there so there's probably more like about 50 big guys and a hundred and fifty little guys then far

ther out in the field we got for sure a lot of ducks and some specs so the cool thing is there's those little lessers will come in where the specks going is particularly in the morning they act more like a speck the big honkers who usually by themselves but and there there's enough of them in here as well but now that I got a better look it's a lot of lesser so we don't have to be real concerned about screwing up a big honker hunt it's just trying to figure out where you might want to hunt this

one is the tough part if we get permission whatever's in the hall we're gonna go get ready guys these are gonna be killable let them work a little more a little more get ready get ready be ready to fly straight over oh yeah get ready get ready get ready ready ready step up boys that one got in somebody's way that was nasty hang tight guys until these four maybe oh yeah these wings come do it kill the poor guys kill the poor nice nice shooting boys the left side guys big flight big flight Wow the

y drop a leg like that they liked it be patient be patient let's get him to line up hey hang on hold tight hold tight hold tight back back back back get ready on the floor we're gonna go on these four if their regular face hold hold hold hold hold hold ready tell them guys there's lots of birds there that was kind of bad bad I just snuck in the far north end of the field and idle very slowly up the fence line I was sure the geese were still here and I just was creeping a hill and and seen him so

I'm backing out of here very slowly because I was a long ways away but that that doesn't mean nothing if they get nervous and they leave now it's not good so I want him sitting there and everything looks good I think we're safe so if I were to roared in this field it wouldn't have been so safe and I know I know where they were at 4:30 and they're not very far away from that position so I'm just going to look for the best possible spot and go go with that we'll see how it goes I you know will no

body 9 o'clock tomorrow morning if we're smiling or frowning but I think it'll be all right hey how are ya I'm good good that's good well you think you good well left BA they've been sitting there long time oh they were here when I got here at 4 o'clock yeah they're never done for the damn sure I know for a fact at 4 o'clock there was about 270 to 300 right now there isn't even close come on but and the ones I've been watching through this little tiny 25 no I'm not kidding no I'm not as you talk

ing about we haven't seen the honker all night we got 500 Jack we got the truck in the field just the way it's gonna go how did your heart go the respects laughed at us all night and then the snows did it nice though we killed 22 or 25 I mean they're all right there you know it was good but but the and they're all piled up on the other end of the field but that's that alright well call Darrell tell him to go check out Ovie's docks okay all right sounds good he's close but ah yeah you know we sho

uld be alright for tomorrow Jeff's got a combo mel buttoned up a honker hunt that we've been watching has some ducks on it so we definitely want to hunt geese in the morning with ducks because the way the weather is we just we just got to do it that way cuz there's you know you end up with afternoons like this when it rains and it messes up the geese so see how it goes I mean it's time to clean up thousand decoys and get these guys in for dinner in a cocktail they're all wet and we all want a ni

ce hot shower so time to get out of here yeah I just seen some of my Birds just now I'm in a straight line with them so I tentatively pinned it on my phone so that when I go in the field I got somewhat of an idea and then from there I'll just look for some sign and I just got to find a proper spot to set off when I go in so this will help I'm just going to look at a couple of ruse now to make sure the birds aren't in it and then we should we should be good to go go well we had to take them and w

e call it radians go there you go good good hungry stuck we all around the P field which is good well it is an absolute beautiful morning this morning we have Jeff hunting a combo and Mel hunting some Canada geese which could be a tricky Hut we'll see what happens there it all looked good until the very last couple minutes when he put it to bed and they went to roost a little close and but we'll see how that shakes down anyways I'm watching a bunch of ducks hear a bunch of specs I gotta go check

in some Canada's big wave of geese coming there right now so lots of birds are out which is good and just a matter of you know seeing what they do and and if we can put something together for this afternoon which I'm sure we should be able to so should be good two down yeah good shoot well they're starting to go it's a it's a slow start we've got five fogs really rolling in so guys got to really keep his eye out and listen for these things because it's gonna get to the point we're not gonna be

able to see them but it's gonna be a little bit of a struggle for sure I think I don't know so far so good I think it'll get even better with this fog roll and then long as the birds can find us oh go go go got to yeah you shut it out about six out of that go go go go let's hurry we got geese somewhere so we're we're looking for some ducks to back up Mel's Mel's hunters I mean he ended up with about 10 10 candies this morning and he's still out there but it won't get a duck so there's there's a

situation here where there's a lot of ducks but we can't really get to them because there's a whole bunch of standing crop and there's some significant ditches and irrigation structures in here that make it difficult to get to the birds and that's if they're even feeding right there which I think they are because there's evidence here where they've actually mauled the crop so it's just a little bit more complicated than I'd like it to be and I said try to figure out a way and if I can get in if

not we just have to wait till it's harvested you know this is it right here but I think the duck feed is just over the hill and we might be able to figure this one oh gee lots of ducks here Wow Wow look at this this is all full full of ducks I knew there hitting this ditch so here's the duck trails they're just some of them are walking up right through here some are just hopping up and that's why once they're in here once they land we're not seeing them fly out they're walking over I think and t

his has all been fed on it's all shelled out I knew it I think this is the feed right here how do you hunt them here though oh boy I might have to call the landowner back and see if we we can get in here somehow I might have to just go through a little bit of just a tiny little bit of crop and it most of its destroyed anyways and then we can get the Ranger in here I think we can shoot Amelia see we might have to watch it once more now that we've been in here we know what's going on and see what'

s going on now that we know what's going on we'll kind of have to see what's going on go come on boys hit him good job five guys we better not miss we wouldn't have been happy if you water I was going to be laughs now big time right in the middle where everybody got the two yeah I didn't think you're here to get him for a minute no I know I didn't get it I'm okay with that Greg if we add up all the birds we've individually killed we have like 28 yeah I know eleven no I I think you get the odd bu

nch coming through there so few flies flying that the boys are saying so long as there's a few flying like that one come right in just like it should so but yeah I know what we're doing already first those conditions we faced with this morning and yesterday so so far so good it'd be nice if we could pick up eight or nine more and then to make a really good morning kind of a tough morning here at the camp Jeff ended up with 23 of his 32 ducks last I heard and I bought nine geese and you know we h

ad a bit of trouble spot into just from the weather you know last night was yesterday was in Clement then we got this front come through and they cleared up and now we got more front I can just feel that cold north wind and I think I'm just gonna go back to the lodge and and we'll make some decisions talk to the guys see what they got going on there's a duck hunt north of the camp and there's this yeah I mean I don't we'll just figure out this one's gonna be a truck to get in here and especially

trying to reduce any of the damage although you know a couple of tire tracks versus $5,000 beating up the crop is probably a lesser of two evils you know so we'll see we'll figure it out at least I know where they fed and and I'll take it from there drop all the warning didn't go as good as I thought it would we had a lot of fog come in which screwed up froggy 7080 Birds we ended up with 11 there was a lot of birds in here last night and it's just they didn't come in this morning there's a few

coming in now of course we're packing up but the birds that did come in did it really really well so the guys got some quality shooting but yeah tough huh but it's it's tough out there I mean we're getting we're getting a lot of snow geese no we don't have the number of specks it's normally here and yeah it's it's a weird year that's a tough year for sure we were used to that easy stuff now we've got to work for it