Band Reports: A Very Special Lesser

On a rainy Oregon morning Mike Callian pushed a cart full of decoys into an annual wheat field with his hunting partner Brad Cochran accompanying him. Hopes were high for the duo, since the prior scouting trip had found the field getting used heavily by plenty of lessers and cacklers.

“We arrived at the spot where we wanted to hunt with an hour to spare. There was a good edge hide facing straight north, with a decent southwest wind. We half expected it to be a quick hunt with the number of geese using the field and just the two of us gunning,” Mike said. “Halfway through the decoy deployment a massive wave of geese descended to the field. We are talking a complete refuge arrival a solid hour before our shooting time.”

The geese tried to land in the field, even with the two hunters right there trying to set up decoys with headlamps on. Finally, the massive flock of birds decided to settle down on another part of the property. “Prior to the hunt, Brad and I discussed letting the cacklers go and focusing on the lessers. Even with the chaos of the bird’s early arrival and touch down, we agreed to stick to the plan. We figured we’d be fine, farmhand bird hazers and bald eagles are always in play in the Willamette Valley, and wintering geese typically don’t get to mow down a grass field for long,” Mike notes.

Sure enough, the birds were soon scared away by a farmhand in an old, rusted truck—only to head much farther to the west, giving a dismal outlook on a day that had so much promise. Luckily, as the day wore on, small flocks of singles and pairs started to work their way back to the spread. The flocks consisted of young cacklers, so no safety catches were being clicked off just yet.

Mike recalls the morning, “They landed in the spread and fed, preened, and did all kinds of ‘cackley’ things. One flock came in with a nice pair of lessers in tow, but there was no way of taking them without collateral damage to the cacklers, so they got a pass.”

The morning slowed down without a shell being fired. It wasn’t until later in the afternoon when a flock of 23 cacklers came into the decoys and put on a show, performing a matinee of entertainment for the hunters in the blind. Chasing each other around, drinking from a pool of water from a recent rainstorm. The birds seemed as content as could be. Finally, a few of the birds looked to be on high alert. Mike lifted his eyes to the “danger.” A pair of lessers were descending on the field. “I hadn’t touched my goose call all day, but this seemed as good a time as any. I gave them a few short, powerful notes. The pair locked wings and started to aggressively double-cluck on their way to us,” Mike says.

The scene was perfect. The gander dwarfed the female, as they both made their way into the decoys straight in front of Mike. Finally, it was go time. The safety clicked off, the doors to the blind swung open, and Mike noticed a square protrusion at the base of the bird’s neck.

The cacklers rushed off in a panic from the fired shot, and the lesser fell to the dirt. “The thought crossed my mind, was that bird wearing a collar?!” Mike said.

He continues, “Brad made it closest to the goose first and shouted, ‘He has a leg band! Did you shoot the collar off?’ I got there moments later, completely shaken up at what had happened. Sure enough, there was a collar. So small and perfectly camouflaged you wouldn’t notice until you were on top of it.”

There, hiding in the feathers, was a GPS radio collar, one of the few ever harvested in the United States. Mike sent the collar back to the biologist, who provided him with the tracking data, and a replica of the collar in return. It now resides on the mounted goose that hangs in Mike’s office.

A day like that, passing on all the cacklers that were soaring into the decoys, proves that sometimes being picky isn’t such a terrible thing.

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