Field hunting Canadas...... extremely tough

[Kip Strickland]

[/B]I have a question for any pro staffers willing to help out. I have been duck hunting for 20+ yrs, but have just recently started to try and field hunt geese here in Central Iowa. I started to buy FFD's for my yearly trips to Alberta and Saskatchewan a couple years ago and then decided since I was investing that much money in decoys I might as well take few days off from duck hunting and try them around home. We have plenty of local geese for early season and there are several here now that have moved in within the last few weeks while I was gone. We scout, find the birds in the field in the evening or morning either one, secure permission, then show back up there the next morning or that evening to hunt and it seems like the geese show no interest at all in our set up, flagging, or calling. I am not the most experienced goose caller, but a few of the guys I hunt with are extremely good. We kill quite a few geese over water spreads, but just can't seem to get them in the fields. This time of year we are typically running 2-4 doz. FFD's with a mix of lessers and honkers. We try to mimick exactly how the geese look when scouting and call the way the are calling to incoming flocks. We know that concealment is important and take extra time to blend in the ground blinds so that we dissappear. Dogs are well trained and in dog blinds too. I just can't figure it out and it is getting really frustrating. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all!

Kip Strickland

[Chad Ryan]

you are going to have to experiment a lot and try different things. you will get a bunch of different ideas and i would keep trying them.. but...what works one day may not work the next, ie...sun, wind, cover...

i would move your blinds away from your decoys a bit and let the geese concentrate on the decoys and that will direct there attention away from you. it is hard to hide 3-4 guys with 2-4 dozen decoys sometimes......also, dig in your blinds; and maybe set up so the sun is to your advantage...that would be a couple things i would try to do first off..

[Kip Strickland]

Thanks Chad, we do dig our blinds in if the stubble is low and we try not to even have to hunt bean stubble. I try to hunt with the sun at my back if at all possible and have moved the blinds 10-15 yds from the decoys at times. We could bulk up our decoy spread with older shell decoys, but the numbers of birds don't warrant that in my mind. There are not more than 100-200 birds feeding anywhere at a time. It is worth a try I suppose.

Anyone else have any ideas? Please post them up. Thanks.

[Jason Connellee]

"Match the Hatch". Sounds like your doing that allready. In my area where I hunt, there's a lot of preasure. Everybody seems to be hunting geese. When I drive around and look at birds and decide on what field to hunt, I try to look or "see" how many geese are using that field. When I hunt that field, I will use that many decoys. Thus"Matching the Hatch". Also, how vocal are the geese. Are these birds real agressive, and very talkitive ? Or do they do the norm ? (the typical goose vocabulary). If this is so, I will not lean into them as much, but rather finesse call them. Now, if they are new birds, migrators just arriving, I have found very aggressive calling works well. High pitch. Excited calling. Telling the geese that there's something down here, stay away, "FOOD". Blind placement and cover-up is critical. It seems that every hunter in the field has a blind. I like to shift my blinds to the side. Put the focus on the decoys. Let the decoys do the work. That's why we buy them. Don't be afraid to make a change while hunting. You would be surprised, what suttle changes can produce. This happened to us on a hunt one day last year. I moved 10 decoys out front. In the beginning, the geese would look, and "slide away". I made the change, and it was like somebody turned a light switch on. We couldn't keep them out of the field. Calling. Watch the lead goose while calling. Look at its body language, wing beats, head movement(s). These are a few things I can suggest. I hope they help. Let us know.

[Chris Jones]

It sounds to me like you are on the right track. The only thing I might add is, don't be affraid to spread your decoys out. When we start seeing heavy pressure, We will often run 50 feet between decoys. If you watch a content flock in a field they are spread out, they will only ball up when they are nervous. Just keep trying! You will get your paticular birds figured out. The way folks hunt in the midwest is completely diffrent then what we do out west.

PS I see our from Baxter, we used to have family reniouns at the brick "communty" building there. I grew up in Toledo and hunted Otter Creek Marsh as a kid. GOOD LUCK

[Jeremy DeVries]

In early season, we are usually hunting all resident geese. These geese have seen each other all year. In other words, these geese have grown up together. They can be tough. The numbers you are talking about 100-200 are not great numbers to begin with. Also, it is typically sunny and warm in early season. So I wouldn't beat myself up over it too bad. As numbers increase in your area, so will your bags, however.....

One of the main things I do to increase early season success is have a HUGE kill hole. And I mean HUGE. Sometimes it looks like we're not even hunting our own sread we're so far out of a completely empty hole. Second, believe it or not, I have also done REALLY well using a VERY SMALL spread. You may actually have TOO MANY decoys out there. Remember, if you're looking at 100 geese in the field, and your putting out 48, the geese might just think they're "too late" and look elsewhere. Sounds like you need to make BIG changes. These are 2 BIG changes that have worked for me. If I were in your truck tomorrow, I'd go with 9 decoys, EXTREMELY well hidden blinds, and VERY LITTLE calling. Just a couple moans here and there. If you were adamant about putting out 48 dekes, I'd spread them from Iowa to South Dakota apart, and make a kill hole the size of Sioux City. Then adjust from there.

BTW...If the flights flying around are 20 or more geese, I'd stick with the bigger spread. If the flights are 4's and 8's (which is what I assume from resident birds, that what we see here anyway), I'd go with the smaller spread. You might just suprise yourself.

Good luck. I've been there.

[quackaddict]

Try to randomize your decoys as much as you can. Alot of guys get into a rut of spreading out decoys evenly over an area. Bunching three or four here and there gives a much more natural look. If you think there picking out the blinds, try setting them so you get a passing shot on the birds as they decoy into the kill hole, thus taking the focus away from your hide.

[Rich Good]

One problem could be the bright night skys we have just had with the full moon, geese become nocturnal when hunting pressure, and bright nights are available.

[Jeremy DeVries]

Rich makes a great point about the full moon and I agree 100%!! All that light lets birds feed all night long. They don't HAVE to come to your feed hole because they're full. Your hunting may just pick right up after the full moon is over.