Early Season Goose

 I haven't done a ton of waterfowl hunting yet because the season just opened and my focus has mainly been on guiding people to deer lately.  Last night though I decided to stroll down a nearby beach with my fowling piece in hand to see what I could find.  I wasn't expecting much so I was in a t-shirt and shorts and only had my gun with me.  When I got to the beach I saw over 100 geese (I am not exaggerating. I counted them) standing on the beach in place that I could easily sneak up on.  I needed my camo jacket and waders to make it work though.  I ran back to my house and put the rest of my gear on.  Unfortunately when I got back to the beach someone had decided to go for a walk on the beach (I can't blame them. It was a beautiful evening.) and had scared them all into the water.  They were about 100 yards off shore.  I saw that they were slowly swimming my direction so I tried to guess where they would swim to shore based on my previous experiences on this beach.  I got settled into a clump of tall sea grass with some logs around me to help me blend in.  As the first part of the group got to me it looked like I was out of luck.  They were swimming by about 50 yards from me.  I could hit them at that distance but would probably end up wounding them and it would be a fiasco to try to chase them across the water.  I decided to hold off and just enjoy having that many geese in close.  I counted them as they swam past me in a single file line.  The geese had broken into two groups at that point.  The first group had 47 and  the second group was almost twice as big!  The first group was too far out but when the second group came by they were a bit closer to shore.  They were about 40 yards away but I couldn't shoot because there were too many of them!  If I would have shot I would have hit more then my limit of 4 and it would have been a mess.  I waited until 1 separated itself from the group.  40 yards is a doable shot but I figured I would just focus on shooting one and make sure it died rather than shoot at several and have multiple geese flopping around in the water right at dark.  When the one broke off I took my shot and managed to mortally wound it.  I walked out and grabbed it and it was probably the biggest goose I have ever shot.  It was huge!  It was a great start to my waterfowl season.