One guide's guide to late-season geese

Unlike many recent years, this December blew in cold and the winter weather hasn’t seemed too interested in lightening up. That means frozen lakes and snowy fields, and with late goose seasons coming up, you can make those conditions work for you.

With the help of Mike Boyd of Coldwater Charters in Niles, Mich., GNO offers up the following tips to prepare you for the late waterfowl seasons, which are open in parts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, and reopen Jan. 1 in Michigan:

Scout well, but not too early: It’s always good to keep an eye on the sky so you know what the birds are doing, but don’t lock your plans in just yet if you plan to hunt the late season in Michigan. December in the Upper Midwest is nothing if not inconsistent. Right now it looks like cold and snowy will hold, but beyond that all bets are off. We could see a 50-degree day, a foot of snow or a cold snap with highs in single digits. All those events could dramatically change goose and duck patterns virtually overnight.

Now is the time to knock on some doors and make sure your permission to hunt is still in order. Never assume last year’s permission is transferable.

“You need to get your permissions up,” Boyd said. “And if you want to just burn up a lot of fuel that’s up to you. But I’m not going to do that. I’ll do it a week before the season opens. Conditions can really change. The weather is a lot more unstable this time of year.”

As the season approaches, get into the "hot" field -- the one the birds want into. The hot field can dry up quickly as the birds move onto the next one, but if you're there on the right day you might just have to shoot your way out.

Protect the roost: As winter locks down more and more open water, ducks and geese congregate on what little water is still open, which makes it mighty tempting to go right to the source.

Resist the urge. Hunting the roost could make for one big day – but only one. If you shoot it up now those birds will feel so fast your head will spin. Stick to the fields where the birds want to feed and you’ll be able to coax them down more than once.

Stay hidden: Waterfowling among all other pursuits seems like an ever-escalating arms race. We try something, the birds wise up. We try something else, the birds wise up again.

That’s even true of layout blinds that have been so deadly for field hunters in recent years. Boyd says the birds seem to be noticing those random lumps of earth dotted around those decoy spreads.

So blend in as best you can and be still. Better yet, get yourself into any kind of cover – a narrow hedge row or even a clump of weeds. You'll be better off there than if you’re laying in the open.

Setting the dekes: According to Boyd, the more decoys the better. And since you’ve scouted well (right?) you know how to place the decoys right where the geese have been feeding and arranged the same way the live geese looked when you saw them in the field.

If they were all over the place, set a big X out with longer legs on the downwind side in winds less than 10 m.p.h. For really windy days, set the short end down wind, and the stronger the wind the shorter the downwind legs of the X should be. On windy days, geese take a long time to get within shooting range and they can figure things out on the best spreads. By keeping the downwind part shorter you'll get your shots before they can figure it out. 

Always set a pod of decoys directly right and left of the middle of the spread at the edges of the X . So basically you have 2 V's with both the open parts facing away from and the closed ends touching each other in the middle. Place callers and flaggers near the center, and also put hunters on the ends to catch the birds that are reluctant to drop into the center. There will be some. There always are.

Keep it moving: All those decoys might look from a distance like a flock in a field, but if you’ve ever watch a real flock feed, you know it’s constantly in motion. Birds are taking off, landing, walking around. It won’t take long for incoming geese to notice that those four dozen birds they’re headed for are standing stock still.

That’s where the flags come in. You can use the ones that come as a string of goose tails flapping in the breeze, or you can have a flagger or two waving to get the birds’ attention. Or you can use both. Wind socks help, too.

Keep your flaggers toward the center of the decoy spread, then set up your callers near the flaggers. That way when the birds approach they will focus on the sounds they hear and the movements they see, and all the commotion will be coming from the same general area.

Call, call, call: In the late season more calling is better because Canada geese are more vocal when it’s cold. Here’s how Boyd describes the calling sequence: “First the greeting call: Blow ‘too-wit too-wit.’ When the geese get closer, blow clucks, ‘twit twit twit.’ When they are just out of range but online, use grabbles: Blow ‘da da da da da da da da da’ into your call and you'll be doing the feeding grabble. Speed it up and slow it down. If they flare, and some will, use the double cluck to make them think one or more of the birds in the flock decided to land. Blow ‘to-wit-a, to-wit-a, to-wit-a’ as fast as you can and still sound like an excited goose landing. If you get no response and as they are leaving, hit the flag and blow ‘wit-toooo, wit-tooo wit-tooo,’ you're basically pleading to the geese that it's OK come back. If they start to turn, just start at the beginning and this time if they come close take them.”  

Let your ears guide you: If you’re one of the lucky ones who can hunt ducks into January, you may have seen this before: A group of ducks are working a goose spread hard, so you or your buddies drop the goose calls and start the feeding chuckle. But rather than work in, the birds flare and blast away at mach 2.

When that happens it’s pretty clear your birds have heard it all. Guys just like you have been squawking away at the since October and now those birds know better. So drop the duck calls and call them like geese. Often they’ll buzz straight in. If they don’t, try some good old silence.

Those ducks need the same things geese need: calories and a little gravel. They’re still hanging around – and haven’t flown south -- because they’re getting those things here. So when they see a field full of geese, they’re inclined to come down. If your noise is spooking them, shut it.