Fall Snows

[Goose Junkie]

Anybody have much luck hunting snows before the spring season opens? I keep trying to talk my hunting buddies into learning to mouth-call snows so we can get after them in the fall. I feel like four or five really good callers in a spread of fullbodies ought to do the trick, but I haven't talked to anyone yet that has had much success doing just that. I'm the only one of our group that can really call snow geese, but I don't know if one caller is enough to bring in bigger groups. Of course ecallers are always going to produce better results, but for those of us who hunt their wintering grounds the birds have a tendency to leave before the spring season opens if weather permits them to. The other thing to consider is that one of these days the Feds may get rid of the CO and then we could have a whole generation of hunters that have become dependent on the ecaller. Another point is that by the time the spring season opens lack of hunting pressure has allowed the big flocks of snows to eat out large areas of flooded corn and other areas that would otherwise be feeding ducks and dark geese. I think it would be better if we kept some pressure on snows throughout the season instead of waiting for an "all-or-none" type hunting scenario in the spring.

[JEDJR]

GJ, Your right. IMO, Wintering birds are a totally different animal, especially all the way on the wintering grounds of the gulfcoast, SW Louisiana/SE Texas.

Once these birds arrive and start feeding, their routine of roosting, feeding and loafing can be nailed down to a big extent, but the problem is that these areas mentioned are heavily leased up in small tracts of land, 170-300 acre leases and the hunting pressure is pretty relentless for 3-4 months straight whether it is coming from huge ragspreads hunting snows to duck hunters sky busting at them as they pass over their pits.
I'm sure a lot of hunters in the south can relate to what I'm describing.
Hunting the ''X'' is fairly easy when you know they are coming to your spot, But when you have to run traffic birds 90 % of the season, You need huge numbers of decoys/a large mass of white to get there attention and to work the larger flocks of birds.
We have ran 2-300 fb's and shells, 700-1000 windsocks, both have killed birds, But each day is different. As always, Location and weathewr are the two most vital elements when hunting snows.
I am always willing to try a new snowgoose call, but they all pretty much sound the same or the hunter blows them the same, That's why I like to mouth call. I am the only one in our group that does it as well since my nephew has left for the Marine corp. I have a 15 year old nephew that's coming up in the ranks of snowgoose hunting now that has the perfect voice for them as his voice is changing. I worked with him a lot last season, and he will be helping out a lot this season. You do need 2-3 to sound good and work in murmurs while someone else is doing the 1-3-4 barking notes.Another advantage to mouth calling is when getting to hunt multiple species of wintering birds/Geese, You can mouth call while holding a speck call in a groundblind and never miss a beat going from one to another when you are working more than one species at a time.
As wintering birds, we are lucky to hunt them with our specks and our 16 day canada goose season, so mixed bags in our ragspreads are always common. For 2-3 hunters, we normally average about 13 or so snows and blues, plus or limit of specks which is (2) per hunter. So if we kill 18-19 geese a hunt, we have had a great day affield.