Archery Geese and Ducks?

[Ragnarok Forge]

I love the varying thoughts in this thread.  

I have to say that scatter gunning a duck on the water is like shooting a fish in a barrel.  Stalking one on the water with a bow and shooting it successfully is a lot harder than many may think. The ethics of shotgunning have nothing at all to do with the ethics of archery.  I can't see how you can say, shoot a sitting rabbit, or make a noise to stop a deer and shoot it while standing still and then call shooting a goose on the ground unethical.  They are the exact same thing.  I don't shoot turkeys off their roost, but I sure do love to shoot them standing still with their heads extended just like the geese I hunt.  Again, it is the same exact thing.  Who here would shoot at a flying turkey.  If not, why not?  You would do it on a goose?

I live in a highly populated area.  Every year there are pictures of ducks and geese flying around with arrows in them on the Evening News.  This presents all archery hunters in a horrible light.  Shooting them in the air with a bow leaves plenty of them wounded and that my friends is considered unethical by everyone who sees those wounded animals on TV.  It also fuels the Anti's war chest and troop count.  I shoot them in the air and on the ground / water.  Nothing unethical or unsporting about it in my book.  Stalking them is tough.  Using the turkey guillotine broad heads and aiming right below the head pretty much ensures an immediate kill and no bird flying around with an arrow thru it.  Hunting ethics requires me to make the most humane kill I can.  I owe it to every animal I aim at to optimize the percentage of instant kills I can make.  That to me far supercedes a shotgunners ethics that bleed over in some cases to traditional archery practice.  I have a lot better chance of that on a goose on the ground.  

I love the challenge of aerial shooting.  I enjoy watching the arrow flying to meet the goose, I even enjoy watching it miss and sail off into oblivion from where I will try and retrieve it.

[Molson]

I shot at a flying turkey once.  It was almost a helluva shot!!!    :D

[Ragnarok Forge]

True that Molson.  I would love to see some video of a aerial Turkey kill.

[Steve H.]

Try shooting at a duck shooting the rapids while you are shooting the rapids on the other side of the stream in a canoe with your moose-weight bow nearly horizontal!

[Ragnarok Forge]

Again we need video, that would be a great video segment!

[Mike Vines]

I myself have taken geese, turkey and pheasants with my longbow. most of the geese and pheasants were on the fly, but if I'm able to call in a bird, and it lands in the decoys, that's my bird.  I have even taken the tail feathers off of a flying teal.  That is the closest I have been to an arrowed duck.

[Izzy]

Never bowhunted waterfowl but will this fall with my new canoe.I plan to call geese in close to islands and then have at em from a makeshift blind.Ill be using wood arrows in the hopes that theyll be easy to find on misses.I have seen videos of people shooting at ducks with longbows and I couldnt get the grin off my face.Now if I could just get my bud to let me bring a longbow on his duckboat in the late season Ill take some passing shots.Hes got the mentality of a subsistence hunter and has a hardtime giving critters a much better than average chance.

[James Wrenn]

I am going to try and shoot some geese this year.I will shoot them on the ground or on the water however.Too many cows in the pasture to be flinging arrows in the air.They are taking over around my sisters farm so we hope to kill some of them and the cows can't take well to shotgun blast.

I hope they are good to eat but I have never tried one.I enjoy shooting eating animals more than just doing pest control.

[Mike Vines]

If you use carbons over the water, THEY FLOAT.  It made retrieving them much more pleasant.  And with all the weight up front, the fletchings stick up making it that much easier to retrieve.

[Mike Vines]

Originally posted by James Wrenn:
 

I hope they are good to eat but I have never tried one.I enjoy shooting eating animals more than just doing pest control.    

Treat them like you would a steak.  I have even corned it, much like you would a corned beef, and when I took it into the chef at work, he couldn't believe it was goose.  He swore it was beef.  So he proceded to make me up the best "Canadian Ruben" I have ever had.