2017 Snows

Well another spring snow goose season has come and gone and like all the others this one had its ups and downs.  Overall everyone had enjoyable hunts.  Some hunts were tough, especially a week in Missouri, and then we had quite a few hunts that were amazing!  South Dakota was a fun time this year with only a little mud to play in instead of the usual 8 inches of slop that we usually have!  Missouri was slower for the second straight year.  The warm winter we experienced really took a toll on the Missouri hunts by keeping the birds more spread out than on a normal year.  The snows seamed to roll through Northwest Missouri and didn't really stop for more than a couple days.  It was weird, we would have a great day with a huge push of birds and then the next day we wouldn't see much of a flight.  It was a fast migration unfortunately but that usually means that the geese get back up to the breeding grounds faster and we usually have a good hatch!  Hopefully they don't get hit with any nasty weather this May and June.

Bryce and I need to say a big thank you to our hard working crew.  These guys bust their butts and go off little sleep and lots of coffee and Redbull!  The list of guys include Charlie, Bob, Trevor and Reid.  Each guy brings something different to the table and that helps us out tremendously. 

We also need to say a BIG THNAK YOU to all the hunters that come and hunt with us.  We realize that there are endless snow goose guides that you all can choose from and we are honored and happy that you choose us!  Through the good hunts and the not so good hunts you choose to come back year after year and we appreciate that! 

This was our 10th spring at Last Pass guiding snow goose hunts and throughout the years we've seen quite a few things change.  We are constantly adapting to stay on top of these geese and this coming year is no different.  We have a couple new things up our sleeves that we believe our clients are really going to like.  Its hush hush right now but the cat will soon be let out of the bag!

Just a reminder to everyone.  All returning hunters have through August to reserve your dates and get your deposit in.  Then September 1st it opens up to everyone.  We had a couple groups this last spring get burned by not reserving their dates and getting their money in asap.  Also just a reminder that you have 2 weeks after you reserve your dates to get your deposit in. 

We've put away all the snow goose gear and now its time to get the boats ready for some much deserved walleye and crappie fishing with the families.  Besides fish there are also turkeys gobbling and soon the morel mushrooms will be popping!  Get out and take advantage of all that mother nature has to offer!    

Grilled Snow Goose and Asparagus  

A Great Start To The Morning!

Coldest Hunt Of The Year

Snows In The Snow

Josie With A Rusty Headed Snow

An Average Snow Goose Hunt

Get Ready, Here They Come!

Bryce has Josie, Charlie has Dee but I've got the coolest dog at Last Pass!  Hawk is one cool dog!

A Great Morning Hunt

Geese feeding on the Big Hill all around the decoys during this hunt

The End Is Near

It's been a fun 4 weeks since our last Blog. Many great hunts have taken place along with a couple slow days that we'd like to forget about. We had a banner season on mallards out of our fields this November with many big bunches of greenheads decoying beautifully.  It seemed like we shot a handful of ducks every hunt along with geese.  Of course we had some great decoying ducks the week AFTER duck season closed!  Unfortunately for us they received a free pass and walked around the decoys and ate without being disturbed.  It was fun just watching them work down into the decoys. 

Today is Sunday, December 18th and it was a whopping -25 out last night!  The temp did rise up to -9 today but it was way to cold to hunt.  So we took the day off for some much needed rest and we stayed nice and warm while we watched some football.  We only have 17 days left to hunt geese in Minnesota.  With the 2 snow storms we've had and the bitterly cold temps the last week and a half, we've lost a lot of our geese in Rochester.  Its not all doom and gloom for us though.  We have a field that has a good amount of geese feeding next to it so we are managing our hunts and beating up on them a couple times a week.  Instead of burning it up on one great day, we are hoping to have a bunch of good days!  Later this week the temps are supposed to get back to normal and that will get the geese up and moving a little better than this artic cold. 

We have a few openings left for this year.  Give us a call and we'll let you know if the hunting is worth your trip to Rochester or not. 

3 Pack In Tight

30 Bird Shoot

A Quick Limit For Pete And Phil

Single Working In Beautifully

Snowtime Fun!

These Geese Learned Quickly That These Teenagers Shoot On Their High School Trap Team!

Nothing Better Than Snow, Geese and Kids With Huge Smiles!

These Next Pics Are Some November Morning Shoots

I've said it a few times before, but while out hunting we get to see some amazing and funny things.  On this hunt we watched this hot air balloon try to land a half dozen times in the city of Rochester.  It didn't work so they kept coming out and eventually flew just south of our field.  Thankfully we didn't have any geese flying at that time!

Future Guide, Brady, Helped His Dad Bryce Put A 5 Man Limit Of Geese On The Ground And 3 Bonus Mallards On This November Hunt

A Nice Mixed Bag Of Geese And Mallards

Dusty And Austin On A Morning Grind

8 Man limit of geese with 9 bonus mallards.  This hunt was wild with a thunderstorm sneaking up on us and a good amount of lightning and heavy rain.  We just closed the plywood and took shelter in the pits!  It even had pea sized hail that came down on us for a few minutes.  Its the only time I've seen it lightning and then thunder and then we hit the buzzer and killed 5 geese!  It was a crazy hunt!  After the storm went through the birds worked perfect.

We still have some openings left for spring snows.  This is a year that you aren't going to want to miss!  With all the snow and cold we will finally have a good snow line to hold up the geese this next spring.  The last couple years have been such a fast season with nothing holding the birds back.  The snows had a record hatch and that means lots of juvies bringing the major wads of geese all the way to the boot bags!  Give us a call and we'll put you on a great hunt. 

Its time to buckle down and hunt hard the last 17 days of the goose season!!!

Its Goose Time!

Its November 16th today but to all of us die hard waterfowlers it feels a lot like Christmas Eve! The Midwest has a huge snow storm barring down on us for Friday/Saturday with 6-10 inches of snow getting dumped to the north of us! Anyone that hunts Rochester with us knows that means MIGRATORS moving in.  I find myself checking the weather channel every 15 minutes just to make sure they haven't changed the forecast or that the storm isn't sliding south.  I don't want everyone to think that this will be the big push but the way its looking, this will be a great way to push some numbers of geese into our area. The temps will finally get down to where they should be and that will help freeze up some ponds and shallow lakes up north. 

Before I get to excited about our upcoming storm system moving into the area, lets relive some of October and the good hunting we had. We spent most of the month beating up on wood ducks and a few other puddle ducks.  September gave us more rain than I can ever remember and that created new hiding places for the ducks.  Unfortunately for them the boys at Last Pass are great at playing hide and seek and we were able to find the little nooks and cranny's that the ducks have been trying to hide out in!

The goose hunting that we did in October was pretty good. We mostly hunted geese towards the end of the month when all our fields were harvested. We lucked out and had a good push of new birds into Rochester about the same time our fields were harvested.  For three weeks now we've been picking on these big swamp donkeys and they keep coming back for more! We ran hunts last weekend Fri-Sun and all three days our guys had a blast shooting good numbers of geese. I love this time of year because the geese are new and really dumb and the hunts are usually done by 10:00 so we can still make breakfast at the café! 

This year we had more field work than we've ever had with multiple fields needing upgrades. I say it every year, but without our team of guys, getting fields ready would take Bryce and me forever to get done. I would like to thank Charlie, Dave, Jack, Tyler and Reed for helping us out. The fields look great and I'm basing that off the dozens and dozens of geese that decoyed last weekend!

Below are some of the pics we've taken so far this year. I'm hoping its just the tip of the iceberg and this year keeps rolling with terrific hunts. If you want to get in on the action give me or Bryce a call and we'll hook you up!

Hawk with a giant

One of the many bunches that worked into our decoys so far this year

The Alaska boys getting in on some Minnesota Giants

Upgrading the Northfield

Hawk with another banded early season goose.

Early season means great chances at bands and they come in flocks!

Great sign in your field when you set up and see tracks and droppings all over the place

Olivia with her first goose! I love seeing kids get their first birds! What a great feeling

Bruce, Dean, Egon and Mark on a great morning hunt. These guys have hunted with us for years and it was great to see them have a good hunt. Egon flew all the way from Denmark to visit with friends and to hunt with Last Pass! Thanks guys!

Jack, Ryan and Kyle on a quick 35 minute hunt

Josie doing what she loves. 

You gotta love when the first flock of the day looks like this!

Spring/Summer Catchup

Wow where has the time gone?  Can you believe its already the beginning of October???  We as you can see from the pics below we had a great summer and spring.  There were some amazing turkey hunts and a ton of walleyes and crappies caught.  This spring also gave us a bumper crop of tasty morel mushrooms which goes well with some fresh caught walleyes!

Bryce and I both had good turkey hunts this spring in MN.  I was able to take an average 3 yr old MN bird with a 10" beard but his weight was really low.  Every bird harvested has a good story behind it and this one is probably my favorite out of all the turkeys I've shot!  When it came to Bryce's turkey season it came down to if it could go wrong, it did!  I think the final straw that broke the camels back was when he had a tom fired up and coming in on a string and a guy decided to take a ride on his 4 wheeler down the logging trail that the tom was coming up!  The bird ran the other way and Bryce could only sit there and shake his head at the trespasser!

The highlight of the spring had to be Bryce's 10 yr old daughter Skylar harvesting her first tom.  It was an amazing hunt with 3 nice toms strutting around the decoys for quite a few minutes before Skylar decided which one she wanted to bring home.  For her first turkey hunt she got to witness an awesome show from the 3 toms.  The only problem is Skylar was spoiled thinking that you sit for 30 minutes and then have 3 birds come straight in! 

I'll get some more pics from early season up on the Blog this week.  Not all the hunts will be posted because some of the pics show backgrounds that would give away where we hunted.  It seems dumb but we actually had a group of guys thank us for showing them exactly where to hunt with some of the pics we've posted in the past.  So now we are a little more hesitant on showing early season hunts because spots are harder to come by in our early season. 

Skylar and Her Beautiful 1st Tom

The 3 Toms Putting On A Show

Chad's Bird Out Strutting

Chad and His MN Bird

Morel Mushrooms!

Snows Update 2-23-2016

We are hunting in NW Missouri as of right now. We have gotten a lot of calls about birds pushing up into South Dakota and if we plan on jumping with them. Those geese in SoDak are the leading edge adults that we refer to as egg layers. They are brutal to hunt unless you have a good mix of juvies in with them. We have friends down in the bootheel of Missouri that are beating up on the juvies. With that being said and a good amount of birds on Squaw Creek NWR, we are staying put for now. This warm weather has birds strung out from the North Dakota border down to southern Arkansas. The problem with gambling and jumping north to SoDak is its only Feb 23! A lot of snow chances are still out there. We would rather beat up on these happy go lucky juvies than to head north and fight with the adults!

Snows Here We Come!

On your marks... Get set... GO!!!  All of us here at Last Pass are ready to point our compasses south and head down to Missouri for some fun in the sun!  We are only days away from starting our "mud and blood tour 2016" and we couldn't be more excited.  With Squaw Creek picking up more and more geese everyday and temps climbing into the 50's and 60's this week, we are excited to get to Mound City and put some stakes in the ground.  It also is a good feeling when a few of our farmers are sending us pictures of their fields that we hunt and they are plum full with geese.  It also makes sitting at home a long and nerve wracking wait.  We are hoping that good things come to those who wait!  

This spring we have so many exciting and new things going on.  Here are just a few.

This spring we have added another set of decoys to our arsenal.  After field testing multiple decoys and trying them last spring we decided to go with FeatherTek Decoys by our good friend Chris Holste.  I can't wait to put these out and watch the geese dump in all the way to the bootbags!

 Also Charlie has been building his latest and greatest rotary machines and we can't wait to add these into our spreads.  From what we saw of them last year, they are durable and easy to set up so that always is welcomed into a sleep deprived snow goose camp!

There will be a rookie dog in camp this year and I think she'll do a good job.  Bryce's dog Josie was with last year but she was still a pup and she was in the way more than she helped!  This year that will change as she transforms from a nagging puppy to a full fledged retrieving machine!  

We've also locked down some new fields that should put up some good hunts this spring.  We still have all our other fields and we are excited to get down there and find a few more for "hot setting".  

This spring is looking to be a nice drawn out season with the egg layers already sitting on squaw and birds strung out down to southern Arkansas.  There should be consistent hunting with birds leaving everyday but then being replaced by new and younger birds migrating in.  Like every year, weather is the number one factor in snow goose hunting.  

We are pretty well booked up but if you are looking to get out of the house because you have cabin fever, give us a call.  We might have an opening for when you can hunt.  

The New FeatherTek Decoy Spread and Blinds

Last Weeks Hunting Report

 This last week  found us out  in the fields chasing our web-footed friends. Last weeks  strong northwest winds seem to have brought in a few fresh geese but we lost some of our ducks that have been hanging around Rochester.  The only drawback with hunting right now is the unseasonably  warm temperatures and bright sunny skies. This seems to have pushed the geese into a late afternoon feeding cycle which only lasts for about 45 minutes to an hour.  The winds of change are on their horizon as Friday a cold front is going to sweep through our area and with it bring cooler air!  Hold onto your hats because things are about ready to get real spicy around Rochester! This is the time of year that we all wait for... Big slob geese, and cool crisp mornings with hopefully an inch or two of snow! 

 This last Sunday I had the privilege to be hunting with Bryce and Skylar (Bryce's 10 yr old daughter) when Skylar shot her first goose!  Words cannot begin to describe the enjoyment that we all had when she dirt rolled that single at 15 yards. And I wasn't sure who had a bigger smile, Bryce or  Skylar!  There were a ton of pictures taken and even more high-fives given to Skylar. It is always nice to see a young person introduced to the wonderful world of waterfowling.  Congratulations Skylar on your first goose! 

Skylar and Bryce with her first goose!

MANY photos were taken of this proud moment

A pair that did it perfectly!

 

This flock got crushed!

 

Yes we shoot ducks in Rochester!

 

The "Windmill" produces again