Stay One Step Ahead of Late Season Honkers
By: Bryan Pietig

There is no question that late season Canada geese can bring some of the greatest challenges to even the most seasoned waterfowler, and for obvious reasons. By this time of year these birds have seen the decoys, heard the calling, and flown into numerous pits and blinds while seeing them open upon descent. To add to the madness, Mother Nature can throw harder curve balls than a major league pitcher during the months of December, January, and February which not only makes conditions extreme for the hunter, but changes the patterns and moods of geese on a daily basis.  When the going gets this tough, you need to throw a few curve balls of your own.

The ground game:

Every goose hunter has their own unique situation when it comes to field hunting.  Whether you are limited to hunting a lease field or two day after day, or you have freelancing options, the ground game you need to play remains the same.  The name of that game is concealment.  In the area I hunt, there are many times the fields the birds use are large and wide open.  Meaning I am hunting winter wheat, spring wheat, or corn fields where the stocks have been baled.  These fields make the lowest-profile blinds on the market stick out.  In these situations, I make a sacrifice and give up sitting on the ”X” for increased concealment.  Hiding in fence lines may sound like the vintage era of goose hunting from hunting stories told from decades ago.  However, I have found it to work well on birds that are blind shy for a couple reasons.  One, you can make blinds, or hunters without blinds, disappear behind the smooth brome and tumbleweed that tends to grow and catch in fence lines.  Two, it looks more realistic than you might think.  Many times when I am scouting, I see birds sitting closer to roads, edges, and fence lines than most people would dream of setting a decoy spread.  This allows you to stay one step ahead by putting yourself in a situation where geese rarely get shot and are comfortable using.

In many western states, irrigation pivots are the only physical way to grow a corn crop that is popular with both geese and farmers due to profitability and nutritional value to birds.  In many situations, the corn stalks are usually left to no-till practices to conserve moisture which leaves taller stalks than most geese prefer to land in.  Even if these fields are under tillage, they provide more cover than most other crops grown in the Midwest.  As these pivots make circles in square fields, there are corners that the water cannot reach and here farmers plant crops that are more tolerable to draught conditions such as wheat or soybeans.  These corners can be great spots to throw a dirty trick on unsuspecting birds by hiding blinds in the tall corn stalks, allowing your decoys to stand out in the bean or wheat stubble, as well as giving the birds a comfortable place to land.  Again, this is something you can try that puts you in a situation where geese have not been shot at versus the typical pit or blind setups that usually lay in the middle of large fields.

Decoys and Calling:

This time of year I like to take decoys and calling to both extremes.  When hunting with a group of guys who has put some money down on the decoy business, by all means throw out the works, and then sound like it.  This is the time and place where everyone that can contribute at least a honk on a call should do it.  Fowl University co-owner and Bill Saunders Field Staffer Mick Hanan likes to go beyond realistic goose calling in these situations.  He testifies that making as much noise on your calls as you can often mesmerizes birds on their way to the ground in late season situations and can make the difference when hunting high pressure areas.

On the other end of the spectrum, small spreads and ultra low key calling can also provide great results.  There are many week days in the winter months that I cannot get a group together and I hunt by myself or with just another guy or two.  Here is where small spreads make sense because it is just simply too much work to put out massive spreads for one or two guys, and with the cost of gas I won’t be pulling the trailer any more than I have to.  In the open fields that I described before, a few dozen decoys can produce incredibly well to for both geese heading your way or in traffic situations by simply being visible.  In this case, you must also know your place on the call.  In small spread situations, I like to limit the calling to a few ultra-realistic moans and honks, and often do not touch the call if the birds are bowed up from a distance.  If you have birds locked up, let them do the hard work.  Don’t be afraid to back your spread down to a couple dozen or so of your best decoys, especially if you are on your A game with concealment and do not need a number of decoys to help conceal blinds.  Most people play the numbers game late season, and rightly so because it works.  But there are also situations where a small spread is practical as well as dangerous for smart geese.

Pulling Traffic:

Traffic situations are very common for most late season hunters.  Land constraints near large concentrations of geese typically force the majority of hunters to hunt public lands or private lands that are not being used by geese at the present time.  When forced to hunt less than perfect land, there are a couple things that I try to do to pull geese.  First and foremost, you need to be in a high traffic area, which comes without saying.  Do whatever it takes to put you underneath or close to the highway the birds have been using.  The typical frame of mind for most hunters trying to pull traffic is big spreads and big calling, like mentioned earlier.  This is a very effective method because these setups are extremely visible as well and easily heard by passing geese, they simply work day in and day out.  However, if you, or your group of buddies have a less than large spread with less than expert calling, by no means should you be staying home watching those other guys shoot geese.  Using the same small spread techniques as described earlier, you should have all the confidence in the world to be able to run with the big guys, but there area few things that you need to key in on if you want to make small spread trafficking effective.  I feel the biggest consideration with small spread traffic is decoy visibility.  This means choosing an open field with little cover such as drilled winter wheat, wheat stubble, or soybeans.  If you are in a good traffic area, geese will have no problem seeing only a few dozen decoys from a long distance in a field that allows decoys to stick out.  Also, the use of flagging is a must for grabbing the attention of passing geese.  This means using as many flags as you can, as well as long flagging poles to created as much movement as possible to catch there eyes.  One thing that I have learned from many hours of scouting is that most geese that land in a field, land with small bunches of birds on the ground.  The building blocks of a hot field only begin with small flocks that first enter a field, followed by many others that only create a snow ball effect.  This proves that it is very natural for geese to land with only a few others on the ground and a small spread can look extremely natural, especially to birds that have been pressure by large spreads.  Again, know your place on the call in a small spread.  Many experienced late season hunters prefer more high pitched calls that carry sound further when trying to pull birds from a distance.

 The biggest way to keep yourself ahead of the game is scouting, and I cannot stress that enough.  Not only scouting, but learning from your time scouting.  Take a step back and analyze how the geese use the land and food sources available based on different weather patterns.  The more time you spend scouting and taking notes on flight times and fields used, the better you can develop a pattern and be able to predict daily movements to the best of your ability.  Not only noting which fields the geese are using, but what type of fields they use.  Corn is usually the main diet for late season geese but there are times when the weather becomes unseasonably warm that geese will use wheat or soybean fields.  When I see geese using these other fields, it is usually in warm weather situation when the geese choose these fields to loaf rather than feed intensely.  In knowing this, you can set your decoy spread accordingly to mimic relaxed, loafing geese rather than geese that are putting on the feed bag.  

In doing this, focus on what you can do to look realistic, sound realistic, as well as make your decoys stand out in ways that other shotguns have not tried.  These tactics will work when trying to traffic geese as well as bring them into fields they have been using.  No matter what methods you employ, staying one step ahead of late season geese will put more feet in your spread.

Irrigation pivots provide excellent cover. Geese are used to feeding near them and they are common in many western corn fields that attract late season geese.

Find the perfect combination of cover and decoy visibility.

Fenclines are often associated with pass shooting.  However, they also provide excellent non-traditional cover that will fool blind shy geese in open fields.