If you haven't ever been to Argentina, then you should start saving your money and plan to go. I am not a rich man by any means, and it has been tough, financially, but it has been well worth it.45 years ago I watched Curt Gowdy and friends shooting Magellan Geese on 'American Sportsman'. It was the first hunting show I ever saw on TV. They told a little about their trip to Argentina, but I don't remember anything about it, except for the geese. It took me a long time, but I finally made it. Well worth the wait.
We stayed at a ranch named Monte Grande (Big Forest) near Tres Arroyos while hunting geese. They fed us good and treated us great. I went out to the bunkhouse and drank beer and sang and danced with the bird boys in the evening. The rancher even snuck out there and smoked cigarettes and played his guitar. Just seemed to have more fun hanging out with the common people than I did with the rich guys. Not that the crowd I was with weren't nice guys, a couple of them I became good friends with, but the simple life suits me better. Didn't know it at the time, but it was also the beginning of my very close relationship with the bird boys, which would pay me great dividends in the years to come.
We shot mostly in harvested sunflower fields. The geese will dig to get at the left over grain, they love it. They are hunted so sparingly that you don't need much camouflage, just hold reasonably still and let the decoys and electronic callers do the work. We used 2 3/4 " number 3 shot. Yes, the geese came in plenty close for good clean kills. Actually I took a few boxes of 3" number 2's down there the first season. Not sure if it was even legal to take them, but nobody said anything about it at the time. So I sort of showed off a little with some long range shots after the other hunters quit shooting, but really didn't need them.
We shot geese each morning and they let us shoot at a roosting pond one evening. That was a real hoot. The geese were late arriving, it was almost dark. Then suddenly they were everywhere. We shot 135 in about 15 minutes. I could stand to do that again. (No wait I did it again the second time I went down there.)
We shot mostly Magellans, along with Ashey Heads. The very first morning I got real lucky. The outfitter was creeping along behind us, heading back to his truck. Just as he passed by where I was sitting I killed a pair of geese. One of them fell in the field with me, the other fell over a fence right next to the outfitter. He picked it up and looked at it, then came up to me and got the second one of that pair that I had shot. I thought he was just gathering up some birds. Back at the ranch he showed me what I had killed; a pair of Ruddy Headed Geese. Turns out they became a disaster for goose hunting down there. They are very rare in Argentina and the current government almost stopped goose shooting entirely in order to preserve the Ruddy Headed Geese. The laws are slowly changing back, but at least I got to kill an additional species while it was still legal. It would take a good eye to tell them from the female Lesser Magellan on the wing. That was the reason why goose hunting was almost stopped. Hopefully that will all be put to rest soon, so normal goose hunting can crank up again down there.
I shot geese my first two trips to Argentina, then when the law changed I switched over to just straight duck hunting trips. I am really a duck hunter at heart, but still look forward to shooting geese down there again as soon as they get the laws all squared away.
We moved to a ranch named La Tierra (the land) near Tres Algarrobos when we duck hunted. We shot in pairs on small sheet water ponds out in the middle of pasture fields. The ducks had been shot hard already (we went late to make sure the geese would be there) but we still had great shooting. One morning I shot 93 ducks, the next 100. Haven't overshot them since then, but it was fun to start off my Argentina adventures with a bang.
We killed a bunch of different species of ducks, but I didn't kill a Rosy Billed Pochard the first year. Made up for that the next time.
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