I did not see a single harvested field, either soybean or corn, except for one. This is very unusual. Usually by now something is being harvested. If it weren't for the rain on Friday, I have a feeling some soy bean fields may have got cut. Many of the bean fields look done, brown and withered. I'm certain the bean fields were pretty much all mud.
The corn fields are still surprisingly green. I can't imagine any of them getting cut any time soon. Usually the stalks are dead, dry and withered before that happens.
The one bean field that was cut had happened last week before the rains. It's near the intersection of Route 30 and 111th Street. A sod farm had converted some of their sod fields back to soybeans. So this soybean field is surrounded by sod. Which is surrounded by semi-finished and semi-inhabited subdivisions. Which makes it a safe haven. Which is why last week it was filled with geese. By the hundreds.
I want to know how they get trained to look for these things. How do they know a field is being harvested. Do some geese go out looking for clouds of harvest dust billowing out from behind a tractor?
And just what do they say to each other to give each other directions to get there? Do they do little dances like the honey bees do that denote direction and distance?
I guess how they do it doesn't really matter. A field full of hundreds of geese is an impressive site.
October 17th is the opening of goose season here in the north. Farmers in the Yorkville area may want to delay corn harvest till after that. Two days before the 17th they should go cut a bean field that is either bordered by a tree line or surrounded by corn. Then I would go sit in with the trees or corn and just jump shoot what lands in the field.
There's a place I drive past every day that is surrounded on three sides by tree lines. The guys that hunt this always sit out in the middle of the field. I say three hunters in each tree line on signal all walk out towards the middle. The geese won't have anywhere to go and they'll be surrounded.
Of course I know so little about the laws on goose hunting, other than sitting in a blind, that I'm not even sure jump shooting them like that is legal.
But I'll be reading up on that this week.
Then I'm going to go introduce myself to that land owner.