Feathers of a different kind

Not so long ago, I lived for waterfowl. It was pretty much all I thought about, what I practiced and trained for, and where I spent the majority of my logged hunting hours. Last night I got the rare chance to go out for a quick hunt with two of my best High school friends who "for petty differences" haven't spent much time together over the past 5 years.
We were running traffic ( not a field the geese were actually coming too) and seeing as how two of us are fairly accomplished callers, we felt pretty good about our chances of getting at least one or two to be fooled into range. We also had Matt's young son Jack with us for his first goose hunt. At seven years of age, he obviously cant handle a gun, but was as excited as his father was at his young age.
The temps were near 70, so besides swatting a few mosquito's we figured that the fowl wouldn't be flying until the last minute. We were correct in our assumptions. We saw a  small group of seven heading for a field that was obviously not ours. We called with fury in hopes our racket would at least get them to pass closer for a look. They obliged and we managed to scratch two out of that group. One of which being a Richardsons goose, a subclass of Canada goose that resembles the ross goose of the snow goose world. The small short beak and small body size is a dead give away for this type of bird even in adult form.
I do believe this is where my shooting struggles started. After having a superb day on grouse the Saturday before. I was a candidate for my own award of the "conservationist" that my father received last weekend.  i shot 6 shells before I finally connected on my first goose. GO FIGURE!
Before long we coaxed a few more groups well with range, and finished up out limit of 6 geese just before closing time.
I sat for just a moment, and thought about how the three of us had been in this situation before, about 15 years ago (minus Matts son). It felt good to have the old group together, laughing, bagging a few birds, and making memories we can laugh about in another 15 year, God willing.