Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Spring Snow goose hunting

Frustration, long hours, lack of sleep, mountains of decoys, the whine of electronic callers, and ultimately success are all things that go along with hunting snow geese. All but the last one are things that happen day in and day out in the snow goose field and while success is something that you have to earn to achieve, it has to be one of the best feelings in the world when you finally get it all right and the birds decoy for in your face action. While the learning curve for hunting snow geese is just like that of hunting Canadas or Mallards, the journey along the way can make anyone want to give it up and sell off their gear, myself included. Ultimately though, the tried and true waterfowler will press on trying to obtain a small piece of the action for themselves. Sometimes the best way to shorten this curve is to do your homework in the field and during the off-season. Learning from some of the pros is one of the ways to quickly start changing things in the right direction, and after that it is up to you.

Some many things come to mind when we start thinking of snow goose hunting. Electronic callers and their placement along with the appropriate sounds, decoy spreads-layouts-numbers, scouting, and timing are all things that come into play. Even the best spread won’t do you much good if there are no geese in the area, and while e-callers are a definite bonus, blaring the wrongs sounds is one way to see more tails than heads. If you can follow in the footsteps, so to speak of guys that have already jumped over these hurdles, you can easily learn the fundamentals and eliminate as many possible snafu’s as possible before you start.