BilletHead

At least there is no Always choice or great value stuff in there, yep the BilletHead's brands. I see something missing though. The second plate? Is she grading papers tonight? BilletHead

Well with a good four inches of ice formed by the last cold snap and the promise of high winds and warmer weather I was getting pretty antsy to hunt geese again. Friend and OA member Curtise gave a call and wanted to know if we could hunt Monday and Tuesday. I told him lots of ice and we could do a field hunt Monday and hopefully a water hunt Tuesday. He also said he would bring his chainsaw and we could cut a hole in the ice, I thought sure we will? So after talking to him I went and bashed a hole, small hole in the pond we talked about. Made a mess of that! Monday morning Curt made it and we loaded the truck for a field hunt in a cut corn field that had been grazed by cattle. Wind blew and decoys fell over and not much seen and we goose egged you might say. So boring there was some snoring coming from the blind next to me . Picked up and back to the house to regroup. That consisted of grabbing the chain saw and waders. Crazy dude went to cutting and large sheets of ice were loosened and slid under into the water under the frozen pond. A big hole was formed and we hoped it would get a bit larger for the next morning. Back to house again for some duck cabbage rolls and a short sit in the recliners. Looked over and seen Curt's eyes shut without the snoring. HA We decided to make another field hunt in a different field. Loaded up again to see geese in the air. Got to field and while setting up more in the air. Big winds and low flyers to boot. Had almost every land decoy I had out and again they blew over as fast as we got them out. Soon three spied us, seen what they liked and pitched in. None left. When Curt made the retrieve more birds coming, wave after wave some liking us some could care less. Got a couple more and needed one. More in and Curt double tapped him big time. Done with thirty minutes of LST left. While picking up another forty landed behind us. Fun shoot but evenings are a pain by the time you get birds cleaned and finished up. No pictures of that, too late and too tired. Which brings us to this morning. Big warm winds all night. Woke up to those winds howling. Loaded up with a dozen floaters and some more full bodies. Out we went and to our surprise the hole we opened to half the pond. Put out floaters and opted to not put out full bodies as they would of just ended up in the pond with the wind. As we hunted you could see ice jumping out of the water onto the ice sheet and actually see the chunks blow across the remaining ice covered pond. We knew that we had the only open water early but it was thawing fast. Looking to the West birds were beginning to fly in the distance. Blinds partially open we looked at each other and said did you her a goose? I looked to the East and six up high and dropping. Crap we threw the doors shut. The six came over hovered in the high wind and dropped straight down like they were in an elevator in front of out faces. We let them have it and five hit the water. Curt said I got three so the BilletHead managed two. Missed as I do at times. In an hour and a half later all the ice went off the pond. We were not on the "X". today and no other birds taken on this hunt but seen birds hit other places in the distance. Good hunt, good times, good friends and dead geese, Me thinks I need a break from this wind, BilletHead

Well done John and great pictures as always. No ducks to be seen around here last couple of days but geese ah well . Report coming soon, BilletHead

Well the cabbage rolls were good. Will be doing them again. Ground duck was tasty . Got built pretty big kind of like mini meat loaves wrapped in cabbage. BilletHead

Nice Chief! Got some cabbage rolls simmering right now. Guess what? Ground duck . Glad the Mrs. was in the middle of this mess today. Tag team event, BilletHead

Atta Boy Griz! See there just one mistake and we are banished from trying to help out . There was a cringe when the Mrs. seen the mess but the smell that hit her at the front door offset all punishment. I did make up for it though somewhat. I assisted on a double batch of gooseberry jam this morning, BilletHead

Now I see you could actually have some kin that lives near the famous Bennett Springs. The resemblance is amazing. . I am glad the daughters don't take after you. BilletHead

If we all thought the same Wrench it would be a dull boring world. That and we would not have anyone to talk about. BilletHead

Uh oh , You telling me wrench that their may be more one shot offspring out there? We may not know where they are or how many but they are there and we all might personally know them. I will never forget that post and tread lightly wondering who on this forum could be kinfolk. Mink and otter hating proponents of wild hogs running among us. BilletHead thinks this thread should lighten up some. While not agreeing with everything MDC does we are pretty lucky to have them. Pretty easy to deal with general overall rules. We have fished places where in one drainage that was broke down in three or four sets of rules. Needed to be a lawyer to understand them.

Spent the better part of the morning cooking venison bolognese sauce. Low and slow not hurrying up the process. A very meaty sauce not over powered with tomato flavor only needing a 6 oz can of tomato paste. Includes minced onion,carrots and celery. An ounce or dehydrated chanterells re hydrated and the juice leftover from that. Other goodies too. Served over penne pasta. I feel like a happy bloated toad right now. Very happy I may add . BilletHead

Old Plug, OA's own 007 Shaken not stirred . Thanks for your service, BilletHead

Hey Wrench, Tell that to Duckydoty Duane and see what he says . BilletHead

Pour a little in your steel cut oats for flavor in the morning . They need a little extra help you know. Butterscotch just might do it, BilletHead

Well another winner, Side of diced potatoes coated in goose fat, S&P, and some rosemary. Cooked in skillet in oven. I know plating not too pretty buy hey it is for eating. Don't want any plating points. Plus noting to do with the carbonnade meal above I got a new book in the mail yesterday, BilletHead

Am I looking at it wrong Wrench? Isn't this the budget for the whole state in general and the Missouri Department of conservation only gets that 0.6% to run their department? Lets take the 8% is for the department of transportation? 26.5% is for schools? BilletHead

Man ness that bread looks good. I am a sourdough liker. I think it makes great toast too. Now to the BilletHead kitchen. Made a mess, Mrs. BilletHead will have a cow until she gets a wiff of this, A new try for me. Carbonnade. The smell right now in this home is out of this world. With this cold weather there is a lull in my winter fun. Cold and winter in the same sentence as my winter hobby sounds like an oxymoron I know but it is the truth. So time to cook. Best thing about this dish is some of the local foraged/grown/harvested ingredients. So we have venison from the woods out back,thyme from the garden,chanterells from the summer that were dehydrated. As the mushrooms re hydrated it smelled like summer. Felt like drinking the liquid left from that but it needed to go in the pot too. Meat was browned with goose fat I had rendered. Then I had to smell the cooking onions in the remaining goose fat after pulling out the browned meat. Now most everything simmering including a couple bottles of Belgian Abbey ale in the pot and again the smell, Oh My Goodness. Need to put up with this for another three hours until the meat breaks down. When it does I will add some gooseberry jam. Calls for red current jelly but I am going to up it to gooseberry, yep made from our yard gooseberries . WISH I has some fresh sourdough bread from nessville. Guess I will have to manage with Wal Mart everything french bread. I will receive a free pass for the stove and kitchen mess as the Mrs. BilletHead and I have an agreement. If she can get me to cook while she is working she will clean up the mess I make. I have been known to take clean dishes out of the dishwasher and sometimes hand wash some utensils I use. I am not allowed to load the dishwasher though. Hey I learned one time if you load it wrong you are banished from that task! Pays to do things wrong once and awhile . She has learned to let me take care of the vintage cast iron. Do you reckon she messed up on purpose like I did? BilletHead is now planning tomorrows meal and this one isn't even finished.

Good luck Rob young man! You have the whole world ahead of you. Please don't be a stranger and hey give us reports from your area. We all know this isn't the center of the world. Kind of want to believe it though . The BilletHead's

Officially out of the deer woods? BilletHead

Careful now could be your kin folk Glenn . BilletHead

Thursday morning our friends from Arnold, MO. arrived. Brad has been down to hunt for seven years, his wife Pam four of those years. We have had some real good hunts on both ducks and geese but Brad prefers geese and that was the target and if a duck happened buy it would be taken out too is possible. Good food, good friends and three hunts this visit. Started off with an evening hunt. From doing this before we all knew if it was going to happen it would be just before legal shooting time ends. Packed up the trucks with assorted decoys we headed out to where Micah and I had our hunt the morning before. Got set up and settled down, Eighty four decoys. Hard to see all of them but they are there floaters and a bunch of big foot full bodies, Then the hides, Five minutes before LST ended a pair followed by two flocks came in. Pair first let them land then maybe twenty five behind them pitched in ans we let it rip. Seven down with five minutes to spare. Picked them up and time to quit as more wanted in. I will spare you the fuzzy in the dark photo. I really prefer morning hunts and sunrises but sunsets with friends work too. Next morning up and at it again. Took all floaters two dozen mallards and approx four dozen geese. Running a bit late as we were sitting decoys had eight mallards and one speckelbelly try to come in. After we were ready of and on shooting but the "X" was farther East of us. Did not matter we ended up with eight canadas and if we would of shot better we could of had our four person limit! The last hunt we decided to hunt on the "X" we watched the day before. That Place we had seen at least two hundred drop in. Loafing area and as we got there no birds to scare off. Good deal I thought. Got there earlier too so as to not miss early flyers. All floating geese this time. The girls grassed up the layout blinds and guys set the decoys. Pretty steep drop off and could not get decoys out too far. The BilletHead almost went down even with his wading stick. We were hid better than the previous hunts and I felt real good about this one from what we seen the day before. Well one mallard drake started the morning. Then nothing, nadda for a long time. A trio flew buy and we were ignored. Later on in the distance we started seeing mombo wads of geese going who knows where and it wasn't to us. Funny how they decide where they are going. We broke out a few and managed six more birds all geese, Isn't all about killing it is about the process I keep saying and with close friends to boot makes it a hunt. Back at the house we had fun with Brad and Pam's new chocolate lab pups with the duck. Here is Gus at three and a half months, Then Maddie at five and a half months with an assist from Gus, Ate like kings . Stuffed mushrooms , rack of lamb, enchiladas . Smoked duck and goose. Early to bed on new years eve with company leaving early this morning. House is quiet now, too quiet. Missing our friends and the pups, BilletHead

Thanks guys for the kind words. Yes Chief Micah is hooked. Says he is going to try to make it one more time this season! Fun young man and good help too. Our friends from Arnold Mo. Are up and hunting. Got two hunts in so far. Reports coming . BilletHead

Nice hunt Chief!

My bad double post!

Nice RPS, Need to try a domestic duck. BilletHead

Got a call from my friend a couple of weeks back asking if maybe I could take his Grandson Micah for a hunt over the young mans Christmas Break. You all might remember my Post about Micah and the Leviathan. Well you bet ya that can be done so we got to do that this morning. Could not of come at a better time after the thaw. Scouted hard yesterday and picked a spot. Cut a big amount of fescue for the blinds same afternoon. Five thirty this morning loaded up the truck and at six on the nose my friend Richard deleveraged the young hunter. Micah was wide eyed and ready to go. Mrs. BilletHead let hm use her shotgun and told him it didn't miss. Well at least most of the time. We arrived at the pond to find by headlights two large groups of geese had spent the night and they flew out with much honking and the rush of wing beats. Unloaded our junk and built blinds. Asked Micah to cover the blinds with the grass and put out some land decoys as I put out goose and duck floaters. Got the truck hidden across the pasture next to a shed. We than went through talking about our shooting lanes and how high across the bases of each blind we could shoot. Other safety talk and other dos and do not things. Micah was like yes sir and no sir. I felt like a drill Sargent but hey this is how it is on a hunt with a new starter. Started off with a nice breeze and decoys moving good, then no wind with the pond being like glass and decoy spread looking fake with no movement. Thinking to myself this is going to be tough. A lone mallard drake came in and we got him fine. Then a mallard drake and hen in and landed wide, soon another pair of the same in and out wide. The two pairs came together out of range and began to chase and fight. Likely mated pairs I told Micah as this time of the year I began to see this happen as they don't want competition. Well they began to swim our way and they got to what I though was close enough range I told him lets take the drakes and take them we did. We each had a couple of mallards and the best part Micah got his first duck ever. Pond still like glass geese flying all over, some looking at us even setting and dropping but not liking the non moving decoys they would bug out. Then we started seeing singles and pairs. Took out a pair and then a bit later another single. Big wads not working but hey I told Micah it isn't all ways about what you get but what you get out of the hunt an the process. He agreed as we watched thousands of snow geese flying up high. We talked about his school, his sports and music we liked, TV shows. I am telling you I think it is a rarity to have this good as a conversation with a fifteen year old. Wind finally picked up and the decoys were moving well but the skies were empty of birds. Ten thirty or so I ask well what do you think? He says I am happy and we can call it a hunt. I then told him every time this happens and we pick up birds will find us. We laughed and opened the blind doors, began to empty the guns when five with their wings set and quiet began to drop. I said doors shut and get ready. They turned and began to leave and I called hard as they headed to another pond Three broke out and turned back again set. Pulled out one more time and I called hard again. Back this time and dropped in committed and all three went down! We rock and high fives and fish bumps we did. Picked up a couple of very satisfied hunters. A old one and a new one. I am so blessed to have Micah and his family as friends, Micah and his first goose, The days take, BilletHead