Central South Dakota Youth Goose Hunt marks 25th year

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) - Around a thousand Canada geese were forming a swirling vortex of birds descending onto a massive decoy spread with the high-pitched roar only massive flocks of geese can produce.

Their calls joined with those of the thousands of geese already down on a field behind a hill the hunters were set up on. It was loud. So loud that no one had to use their calls, Matt Jacobson, who at the time was on one of his first central South Dakota Youth Goose Hunts, said when he recalled the hunt years later.

“We went back in right before dark,” he told the Capital Journal (https://bit.ly/1yWekJa ). “We laid there and we had a flock of probably approaching 1,000 birds come in. They were tornadoeing, maple leafing and everything else. They were dumping in.

“When Wick finally yelled ’Take’em’, I don’t remember how many geese we had on the ground. I’ll never forget it. I don’t know how many geese were killed but I will always remember that hunt.”

It was that experience, combined with countless others earned through many hunting adventures that hooked Jacobson on goose hunting. It’s become a lifelong addiction, one made all the stronger by the youth goose hunt and the friends he’s made through it.

For Matt’s lifelong friend Sam Koenecke, it was the mornings spent shivering under giant shell decoys in corn and wheat fields north of town as a 9-year-old. It was the getting yelled at by the grown-ups because he was complaining. It was the chance to watch, though he couldn’t shoot, the geese cup their wings and drop into the decoys by the hundreds.

Wicker Bill, the man to whom the youth goose hunt owes its existence, was a friend of Koeneke’s father. And having the big heart for kids that he does, Wicker would often take Sam goose hunting.

“I was 9-years-old and I had always hunted with Wicker,” Sam said of the first youth goose hunt he can remember. “I’d go out and lie in the decoys with them and I’d have a BB gun. I would lie between my uncle’s legs and I would sit up to shoot with them. The BB would only go probably 30 feet but in my mind is going 100 yards . I remember looking up at my uncle every time and saying, ’I got one, I got one.’”

Sam’s uncle, Wayne Koenecke, would often come out from his home in Mankato, Minnesota, to help with the youth goose hunt. He was one of the few hunters at that time - the late 1990s - to use a short-reed goose call, Sam recalled.

One of the earliest hunts Sam said he could remember was north of Pierre near some old grain bins that have since disappeared. A flock of 20 birds came in low to the ground, turned toward the hunter’s calls and dropped into the decoys.

“I remember that because I wasn’t cold. I was watching . I watched as those birds turn because of someone blowing a goose call. They locked up dropped their feet down and got 10 to 15 yards off the ground . I thought that was pretty cool,” Sam said.

When Sam turned 11 and was able to actually carry a shotgun during the youth goose hunt, he too began making friends that would last a lifetime. He and Matt and their friend Jason Murray were perennial figures in Wicker Bill’s group.

Matt and Sam, along with a cadre of fellow goose fanatics, are now one of the driving forces behind the Central South Dakota Youth Goose hunt. In January the hunt celebrated its 25th year.

They were far from the first goose hunters to learn from Wicker during the youth hunt. In fact, the hunt started in the fall 1989 as an effort by Wicker Bill and his friend Brian Tracy. Wicker figured that more kids needed to learn how and why to hunt geese over decoys.

His idea was to gather kids together and show them what hunting over decoys and taking ethical shots at smaller flocks could be.

They scouted fields, contacted landowners, asked for help and donations and every year they were able to pull off a really good youth goose hunt.

Wicker would generally take one group and they would sit in the decoys covered in goose shells. Brian would take another group and usually hunt out of pit blinds. They’d try to get as many kids through their decoy spreads as they could over two days.

“Wicker and Brian used to do this by themselves,” Sam said. “They would take 60 kids apiece.”

And it worked.

So well, in fact, that the hunt out grew what even the two experienced guides could handle on their own. They got help from other hunters they knew, one of whom was Sam’s uncle Wayne. Another helper was Tim Withers, who worked for one of the landowners that provided fields for the hunt at the time.

“I think a lot of it was through my job,” Tim said. He now works for the Game, Fish and Parks Department.

Tim started as a runner, taking kids and supplies to and from the decoy spreads during the 1998 hunt. But before too long, he too was working the hunt as guide with his own group of young hunters.

“I don’t remember the first group but there’s always one that will stand out to me,” Tim said with a smile. “We were sitting in the pit and these geese are suckin’ in, they’re bowed up and this kid looks up and says ’holy (cow) look at them’, we about choked on our goose calls.”

That was about the time Tim met Sam, Matt and Jason. They’d started hunting with Wicker outside of the youth goose hunts before they could carry guns and learned a lot about hunting geese from him. So much so that by the time they could carry guns they were well on their way to being great goose hunters in their own rights, Tim said.

They fell in love with decoying geese to the point that sometimes when the season was over, they’d go out, set up and start calling just to watch the birds work their spreads.

“My big passion is tricking the geese, bringing the geese into the decoys not necessarily killing them,” Matt said. “That’s why I stuck with it.”

When, Matt, Sam and Jason aged out of the hunt at 16, they started helping guide hunts. By that time they were already close friends and would spend every day they could in field. They’d bought their own trailers full of decoys and though they struggled the three friends started figuring out how to hunt geese on their own.

“We ran Wick’s group and we did pretty well,” Matt said.

Before the trio left high school things started to click. And soon Wicker Bill was able to spend more time during the youth hunt checking on the other groups. By that time there were several groups led by a number of guides, each with about two kids at a time. The kids would rotate out of the decoys once they’d had a chance to shoot their geese.

When the three friends were in college away from Pierre they’d come back on weekends to hunt. And every year they’d come back to take their group out for the youth goose hunt. They did it because they loved it.

“There’s nothing more incredible than looking in that kid’s face after you get a flock of birds in and they say, “I shot one’,” Sam said.

Sam, Matt, Tim and their host of volunteers began managing the whole thing about four years ago and the hunt is bigger than ever. There are seven separate groups of hunters and each group gets the chance to be in the field on both days of the hunt. There are still two kids to one guide.

Managing the youth hunt has presented a whole new set of lessons.

On Jan. 17 and 18 this year, 104 kids took the goose fields around Pierre. Between them they killed well over 300 geese, ate 10 gallons of chili, 600 hot dogs, 20 dozen cookies, 200 doughnuts, 40 bags of chips, 20 cases of water and soda and 52 pizzas.

“There’s a lot more involved with the hunt than we even knew three years ago,” Matt said.

There is now a board of five members to help organize the hunt each year. They start planning in the summer and gather donations throughout the year, Tim said.

Sam and Tim work with landowners and collect donations, Mark Wetzel makes sure there’s enough food, Chris Hull works to get programs together for the Saturday night seminar, Mike runs the accounting, and Matt helps Tim scout and has a reputation for coming up with new ideas for the hunt.

“We couldn’t do it without everyone who helps,” Matt said.

Sam and Matt said there are far more volunteers too, there are people to help cook, there are the guides who volunteer and there’s hunters such as Tyson Keller who present at the Saturday night seminar. Plus many more who donate food, gear and money.

“One thing is we have an incredible community, we can’t say enough about our donors,” Sam said. “Doug Iverson has donated to this hunt for 15 years, he’s one of the most committed, loyal guys we have.”

Landowners who let the kids hunt their fields also are crucial to the hunt’s survival, Sam said.

“We’ve got such a list of landowners and they expect us to call,” Tim said. “If we don’t call they’ll call us.”

Some of them have donated their fields to the hunt for 25 years. And a lot of them call just to check up on how the hunt went every year, even if their land wasn’t used.

Even with all the help, the hunt is never easy to pull off. This year’s was no exception. January’s weather decided to take a roller coaster ride. And thanks to extended periods of warm weather thousands of geese that would normally winter near Pierre actually stayed in North Dakota.

All that added up to unpredictable geese. And that is less than ideal when you’re trying to get kids hooked on ethically decoying the birds. Tim said he burned two tanks of gas trying to pattern geese leading up to the day of the hunt. He never could get a good read on how the birds were going to act.

Matt, too, was a little worried by Jan. 16.

“For me I’m so stressed out about getting (the kids) on such an awesome, once-in-a-lifetime hunt,” he said.

On Jan. 16, Sam was getting off a ship and heading home from a cruise. When he turned his phone on for the first time in days, he was bombarded with voicemails and text messages - 89 of them to be exact.

“I’ll be the first to admit, when you get seven groups of hunters going on and none of them know where know where to go, there’s going to be a lot of drama,” Sam said.

None of the guides were willing to pin down exactly which fields they wanted to hunt the next morning. The geese were just too unpredictable and the weather conditions weren’t going to be all that great either.

In the end, Sam simply picked a spot for his group that he knew well and called it good. After that, everyone else settled on a spot. Sam didn’t get back to Pierre until 2 a.m. on Jan. 17. He didn’t sleep.

Later that morning geese were trying to land in his group’s decoy spread before it was even ready.

“We had trucks in the decoys and birds were coming in,” Sam said. “Our blinds looked like crap.”

They were forced to take a few minutes and brush their layout blinds into the field. Then the game was on. Sam’s group ran 50 kids through their spread eight at a time. Each one got a goose.

And in keeping with the foundation of the hunt they didn’t shoot into big flocks or flocks that weren’t working the decoys well.

“I think the biggest flock my group shot into was 30 birds,” Sam said.

After all the whole point, Matt said, is to teach the young hunters just how good hunting geese over decoys can be.

“You can sit all day in a ditch and its fun and you get your geese but there’s nothing like having them in the decoys,” Matt said.

To that end, Matt said, the youth goose hunt groups generally hunt over relatively large decoy spreads. That helps draw in geese that have, by mid-January, already seen plenty of fake geese in corn fields. It also has a tendency to draw criticism to the hunt, Matt said, not much, but a little.

“Some people are against the hunt because they say who gets to go out with these huge spreads of decoys and kill all these geese’,” Matt said. “Well that’s not what the hunt is about. It’s about getting these kids addicted . to get these kids to experience what it can be like. I know that’s what hooked me.”

___

Information from: Pierre Capital Journal, https://www.capjournal.com