Say the words “Eastern Washington” to 100 waterfowlers living and hunting in the Pacific Northwest, and most will first think of mallards or Canada geese. Very few would think of snow geese.
“This is my thirtieth season guiding in the Columbia Basin,” says Bill Saunders. “In those first couple years, around 1994 and ’95, if you saw a snow goose it was a big deal; if you shot one, it was a really big deal. Then, 15 or 20 years later, we were starting to see a few—and by ‘a few,’ I mean 500 to 1,000 a day.”
A legend in the waterfowling world, Saunders, 52, is originally from the Upper Midwest, moving from Wisconsin to Idaho as a boy, then into Washington’s Tri-Cities, specifically Kennewick, in the mid-1990s. Today,…
