Jumping into Goose Hunting

In order to get out into the woods just a little earlier in the fall, I decided to try goose hunting this year. I’m starting from zero. I’ve never been goose hunting before. However, with the nuisance population of geese in Connecticut, I figured I might try to reduce the surplus population.


Not knowing anything in particular about goose hunting, I decided to just jump right in. I bought a cheap goose call and 12 cheap decoys. The decoys were just about the cheapest available. They are stackable and are held into the ground with plastic stakes. They seem realistic enough. A piece of burlap would serve as my blind. Everything else was stuff I already had from deer, pheasant, and turkey hunting.

Since I don’t have a retriever, I can’t hunt over water unless I plan on taking a swim myself. Therefore, I concentrated on fields. My first goose hunt was in a half-harvested cornfield. I set up the decoys in the middle of the cut field, and I went and hid in the standing corn. To my eye, the spread looked good. However, the only geese I saw were in the very early morning while I was setting up the decoys. At the time I did not figure that these would be the only geese to fly over, but even if I was at the ready for them, the fog was so think at that hour that I could barely make them out.

By my second attempt at goose hunting, the deer archery season had started. The cornfield I planned on trying already had 3 trucks parked in the lot when I got there. In order to not disturb the deer hunters, I decided to move on. I went to another location that consisted of grassy fields and several small ponds. I had seen geese in this location before. I set up my decoys and sat. Several sets of geese flew over my set up, but none showed too much interest. They simply passed over. One couple came low enough for me to attempt a shot into the stratosphere, but they were truly out of range. At least on this day, I did see honkers throughout most of the day. Three ducks landed on the pond next to me, so that game me confidence that I was communicating danger to the birds flying overhead.

The season ends this week, so my foray into goose hunting will end unsuccessfully this year. To the non-hunting observer, it seems it would be easy to harvest a bird that is so plentiful in public parks and semi-urban areas all over the state. Finding birds at the city park is different than trying to get them to land in the middle of a field a rural area where shooting is allowed.

I’ll probably give goose hunting another try next year. If nothing else, I got a chance to get some good reading done while enjoying an early fall sunrise. On to bigger and hopefully better hunting seasons!

Reach The Beach Relay A Great Success

This past weekend I participated in a most unique outdoor running event. Reach The Beach (http://www.rtbrelay.com/) is a 209-mile relay race across the mountains of New Hampshire. It starts in Franconia Notch (location of the since departed “Old Man in The Mountain”) and ends at Hampton Beach. The standard team consists of 12 people, each running about 18 miles in 3-leg increments. The race starts during the day on Friday, and continues throughout the night. Most teams finish Saturday afternoon to a big BBQ at Hampton Beach. 429 teams participated.


If you’re a serious runner, you need to find a way to get yourself into this event! This event is for charity and pure fun. There are no professionals. No prize money. Just people running for the challenge, team camaraderie, and fun. You can run 5 Ks, marathons, and everything in between, but this relay race poses special challenges that standard races do not. There are several challenges that have nothing to do with the actual running. First, you have to deal with living out of a van for 36 hours. You have to deal with a severe lack of sleep. I was able to get 30 minutes of sleep throughout the race. You have to find a way to eat. This is a special challenge since stores and restaurants are not readily available at 3 AM in rural New Hampshire. You also have to deal with port-o-potties. Race rangers strictly enforce a port-o-potty-only policy. These challenges add to the difficulty of the running.
As far as the running goes, this course is not a standard long-distance course. Most distance courses are relatively flat. This course is purposely not flat. The course takes twists and turns to take you over mountains. Running at night is also a special challenge. This is not running on the sidewalk lit by streetlights. This is mostly running on back roads with only the moon (and your head lamp) to help you see. The race continues rain-or-shine. Luckily, we were able to avoid rain throughout the entire race. However, temperatures did dip to 40 degrees F at night, and rose to abound 70 degrees F during the day.

The race was a great challenge. It felt great to hit that finish line. I am looking forward to participating again next year.

Campground Review: Blackrock State Park – Thomaston, CT

Circumstances had it that my family was not able to solidify our Labor Day weekend plans until later in the summer. Therefore, we decided to keep things simple by staying close to home. Despite the false alarms associated with hurricane Earl, we left on Friday afternoon for Blackrock State Park in Thomaston. In past Labor Day weekends we had traveled some distances. This year we were happy to stay close, and satisfied with our selection of Blackrock State Park.


Blackrock features camping, picnicking, large fields, paved areas, fishing, swimming, and hiking. There were a variety of campsites, from open and grassy to forested and shady. All campsites were quite large. They come equipped with fire rings. There are no hookups, but water, bathrooms, showers, dishwashing sinks, and dumpsters are all near.
The ranger office sells bundles of wood, and provides trail maps. Several gas stations and convenience stores are available just a couple miles down the road from the park entrance. There are also restaurants, diners, a pharmacy, a hardware store and other services all within 5 minutes of the park.
The bathrooms are adequate and standard for state campgrounds. Nothing spectacular, but they get are generally clean. The showers have free hot water, so no need to stockpile quarters.
My 5 year-old son enjoyed riding his bike on the campground roads. We were also able to pull a small fish out of the pond.

The highlight of Blackrock for us was the hiking trails. A blue blazed trail leads from the beach area of the campground up to the rock cliff overlooking the park. This is a relatively short, but steep hike. Once to the top, you are treated with views of the valley, campground, and town.
The second hike we took is a little less known. It is actually not in the park proper. We hiked to a rock area known as the Leatherman’s Cave across the street from the park in the Mattatuck State Forest. Directions to the cave are available from the ranger office. The Leatherman’s cave is not really a cave. It’s more accurately a large rock formation about a mile or two from the road. The start of the trail is about .4 miles from the park entrance. There is a small parking area on the side of the road next to a blue sign marking the Mattatuck Trail. The start of the trail leading to the Leatherman’s Cave is on the opposite side of the road from the blue sign. The trail is blue blazed, hence easy to follow. It winds through some tight laurel and leads you to a huge rock overlook. The rocks under this overlook form the Leatherman’s Cave. The trail to the overlook on top of the rocks is blazed, but the trail to the actual cave underneath is not blazed. One must go down to the bottom of the huge rock to find the cave. The Leatherman was a local hobo circa 1862. The story goes that the Leatherman traveled around eastern New York state and western Connecticut in a 365 mile loop. He made the loop in 34 days, stopping in the same spots at the same time year after year. He was dubbed the Leatherman due to a strange patchwork leather suit he wore year round. The Leatherman has left several caves throughout the towns on his path. The cave in Watertown/Thomaston is the most well known.
We made both of these hikes in the same day. Our 5 year old had no problems making the hikes, although be aware that there are some steep sections with cliffs that require very careful supervision.

Some Tips:
· Even though it was late in the season, we were able to scavenge a fair amount of downed firewood from the adjacent woods.
· Check with the rangers before choosing your site. There are many different types of sites available, but it’s not obvious from looking just at the camp map. Blackrock has a type of site to suit nearly every preference.

Some Negatives:
· Although swimming is allowed at the park, Canada geese have come close to ruining the swimming. The pond is always on the borderline for swimming with respect to bacteria levels. It’s checked often by the state. We did not swim in the pond, but there were people swimming.
· Kayaking or canoeing is not allowed in the pond. We found this out the hard way. After we launched our boats, and got nearly to the end of the pond, a lifeguard decided to start whistling us in. Although kayaking is technically not allowed, I suspect the pond will be unsupervised for the remainder of the year. There is a lake nearby (Blackrock Lake) that allows non-motorized boats.
· The lights at the ranger station stay on all night. Due to the unfortunate set up of our campsite, one of the lights was shining right into our sleep area. We were able to shut our camper window and block the light. The campground has seemingly already taken steps to alleviate this situation. They have planted several spruces on the hill next to the ranger office. Once these trees grow, they will certainly block this light. Until then, it’s a small inconvenience.

Blackrock was a good facility, and we will be very likely to return.