My story took place on December 27th 2005 in Sullivan County, Indiana. My friend Jason Compton has a younger brother who was in a terrible motorcycle accident. Jason’s brother (JT) suffered tremendous head trauma and as a result ended up in a coma. Fortunately, JT came out of this coma, and once he started to recover and progressed through physical therapy, he was finally released to come home. At this point in time, JT was still being fed through a tube in his stomach and still was weak. He made it home for Christmas and after Christmas he told his brother that he wanted to go duck hunting. Jason asked me if I would mind if he went with us and I told him that I didn’t mind at all. Now, his mother on the other hand was not too enthused about JT going hunting, but Jason reassured her that we would not let anything happen to him.
We decided to hunt an easily accessible area which we call the “marsh”. Once we helped JT get to the blind, Jason and I put out all the decoys and got ready for the hunt. Immediately the mallards start funneling into us. It actually looked like something out of Arkansas. JT, Jason and I started blazing away and within 1 hour we had a three man limit of ducks. It was a tremendous hunt, but what really topped it off was that we knew there were Canada geese hitting the “marsh”, but didn’t really know when and where they would come from. Well, in about ten minutes Jason says, “there they are”, and I saw this large jag of geese heading right at us. Jason and I began calling to them and they came right at us without hesitation. Once the jag made it right on top of us Jason called the shot. “Take’em” he shouted and the three of us began to shoot. All three of us limited out on geese on the same flock. Now we have a three man limit of geese and ducks. All six geese landed behind us on the marsh which was frozen solid. The front part had been kept open by the ducks and geese. So I headed out across the ice to retrieve the geese. Out of the six geese we took two were banded! To top it off, the two geese were double banded with $100.00 money bands. Both geese came from Lansing Michigan. What is so amazing about the two Michigan geese is that they were both banded by a conservation officer who is now the regional event director for our local Delta Waterfowl Chapter. Scott Berg, the conservation officer, and now Delta Waterfowl Regional Event Director was actually able to put his hands on the bands for a second time.
Overall, it was an amazing hunt and I was happy to get a friend back into the outdoors. That was the only time JT was able to hunt in 2005. He is doing fantastic now and is the treasurer of our local Delta Waterfowl chapter. He has hunted with Jason and me several times this year.
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