Black Feet Down

The off season is here but theres a few geese around so I decided to go out and set up to hunt with my camera. With fresh snow on the ground and great looking decoys, I was hoping to get the geese in real close for some awesome shots. When the first pair touched down in the decoys, I knew it would be a special afternoon. The closest goose landed about six feet from me and I continued to have great shots at birds. With the temperature at only 5 degrees, the D90 kept clicking away firing off over 600 shots.

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Limits of Black Feet

Central Iowa had a cold blast and the goose hunting action picked up allowing me to shoot my birds and let my buddies shoot theirs while I clicked the shutter on the D90. Allowed a couple to land amongest the decoys offering black feet on the water.

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These photo's were created using layers in Photo Shop by creating a black and white layer over the original layer allowing the goose to "pop" out of the photo.

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Raccoon River Labs - Taz & Cooper

Taz and Cooper from Raccoon River Labs are labradors that will hunt hard and retrieve that duck or goose in marshes and fields. These shots were taken during the 08 waterfowl season which featured some remarkable retrieves from blind retrieves to the dog just using its nose to find the duck in the cattails. Raccoon River Labs is located in central Iowa.

Taz is a muscular 75 lbs and earned his Certified Pointing Retriever in 08 and loves retrieving those big Iowa Canada geese.

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Cooper is a strong 80 lbs retriever and is also a Certified Pointing Retriever. He will use his nose to find those greenheads that try to escape under corn stalks or cattails.

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Golden Greenheads

Once the mallards started feeding in the fields, I was scouting and finding the bee hives. This was the first hunt that I had cut holes in the lid of the Power Hunter blind to stick out the lense. It works great for keeping your camera hide from incoming waterfowl but yet allowing you the freedom to follow them coming into the decoys. I quickly learned that you don't want stubble around the hole in the lid of the P.H. or the stubble can get into your pictures causing them not to turn out so well.

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Me and my dad taking a break amongest the duck action. Thanks Scotty for the picture.

This morning was for the record books with snow flurries and a stiff northwest wind. Between shooting my ducks, I got a few pictures of the tornado of ducks coming into our decoys. I sure wish the light would of been alot better to make these pictures clearer but you can't have great waterfowl hunting weather and great photo days at the same time, usually. I was also concerned about getting the camera too wet from the snow which is falling preety hard.

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