If you have ever hunted snow geese, you know the rush deafening flocks of 1000’s of birds can bring. For those who have never experienced this rush, and would like to get into the sport, here are a few quick tips you should know.
Scouting: In order to be successful in the snow goose arena the #1 idea is to scout as much as you can and cover as many miles as possible. Depending on the time of year you are hunting and the area will determine what size of feed you are looking at. Typically early on in the year, in early to mid march, you will encounter greater numbers of birds with more adult birds which are on average harder to hunt, as the season moves on, end of March through the end of April, you will encounter more mixed flocks with a greater amount of juvenile snow geese or “juvies”. Juvenile snow geese are on average easier to decoy and this is where you will have your higher harvest number days.
Decoys: My past experience is most people like to run 800, to at times, 1200 decoys. This proves to often times be very effective and can be helpful, but if you put in the hours scouting and are located where the birds want to be, you can get by with 400-500 sillosocks and a few rotaries. I like to run rotaries on low wind days because it gives decoying birds something to look at when there is little to no decoy movement. As with any waterfowl, overcast days with low clouds and wind will help birds decoy best, but wind is the main factory allowing birds to decoy well. I like to set my decoys in a tear drop formation with the main bulk of the spread down towards the blinds and then taper the smaller part of the spread back behind me. Snow geese will commonly leapfrog over eachother and feed into the wind. On high winds days set blinds toward the front of the spread where on low wind days sit towards the back of the blinds.
Concealment: The hide cannot be stressed enough, snow geese live to be old and wise and having a great hide is key. Layout blinds need to be stubbled to a tee, as well as cover up any rotary batteries as well as cords running from e callers to blinds and what not. E-callers depending on how many cords you are running to speakers determine how many speakers you run. We personally run all of our speakers in the front of the blinds or around the blinds sort of in a circle. There are a number of different E callers on the market we personally run squawk box made by northern skies outfitters.
There however is one main takeaway when it comes to DIY snow goose hunting! Being on the X cannot be stressed enough and you will know when you are in the right spot as the birds will literally let you get away with murder! Getting on the “spot on the spot” will allow you to run smaller spreads, and make more mistakes than if you had to “run traffic”, where your game needs to be sharp as a tack.
Take these tips into consideration as you head out for you spring snow goose adventure!