Richardson's goose

[jigglestick]

my brother shot a bird we have never seen before today. it is what turns out to be a Richardson's Canada goose.

there are six different variations of the Canada goose. there are the greater Canada's, the lesser's, which are a bit smaller, then there are about four of the smaller versions, sub-species. the term cackler was used on the smallest of the sub-species, but is now commonly used for any of the smaller subspecies of the Canada's.

these Richardson's are the size of a mallard on steroids. the beak is short and stubby and the wing span is said to be 43 inches, when in fact this one only went 37 inches. it was about one third the size the body size of the greater my son shot last weekend.

notice the size difference.

kind of cool really.

we hunted the big winnie area and I have to report there are alot of divers in town right now. tons of golden eyes, ring bills, and blue bills along with redheads and canvasbacks.
my brother also got his first canvasback as well.

my son shot two green wing teal too.

our bag over two days consisted of three scaup, a can, a golden eye, two teal, three buffleheads, a ring bill and the goose.

there were alot of smaller groups of snow geese traveling through, none of which were interested in stopping in.

many flocks of trumpeters. mallards gallore. I need to find out where they are feeding.

I hope you all haven't forgotten about duck season just yet. the fun is only starting!

[Bufflehead]

 Everybody I know calls them Cacklers

 Shot a ton of them

 Years ago when I was in my younger days, we shot two up at LOTW. I thought holy crap, what did we just shoot. Thought we were going to be hung for shooting some rare goose. Since then we have killed a bunch of them

 They have been moving east towards Minnesota for sometime now. They used to only be found in the western U.S.

[JohnWester]

yup, cacklers... shoot some up in Saskatchewan once in a while.

[Snowsnake]

AKA laughing geese I have shot amny also in the Dakatas