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ADVENTURE SPORTS OUTDOORS “The Voice of the American Sportsman”
January 2018
SNOW GOOSE HUNTING: TIPS FOR STAYING HIDDEN
By PJ. Reilly
SNOW GEESE ARE NOTORIOUSLY SPOOKY. DITCH THE CAMO AND THE LAYOUT BLINDS AND LEARN HOW TO REALLY HIDE IN A SNOW-GOOSE FIELD. Snow goose hunting is a spectacle like none other. There are few sights in the waterfowling world as thrilling as a snow goose tornado descending on your rig. With enough birds in the flock, it looks like a corkscrewing swarm of bees pulsing and undulating as the birds lose altitude and their circles get tighter and tighter. At least, that’s what I remember it to look like. Truth is, ever since I got glasses I haven’t really seen the underbelly of a snownado. Can’t risk them seeing a glare off my lenses. My face is pretty much always covered up by a snow goose shell. I have to rely on my buddies to verbally let me know what’s happening, and when it’s time to sit up and shoot. Snow geese are the FBI detectives of waterfowl. They can be deadly meticulous in looking for evidence of foul play as they descend on a decoy rig. The glint from an eyeglass lens, the shadow from a layout blind, the movement of an ungloved hand — any of these and a million more can send the flock reeling before they sail within shotgun range. It’s terribly frustrating. You’d think that simply deploying 1,000 to 2,000 decoys would be enough to keep them from pegging you. I mean, that’s a lot of white objects to sort through to find you. But if your camouflage plan has any holes, the white devils will find them. And they’ll find them from 100 yards away. And then? Your snow goose hunting is done.
But just because the snow goose is a superb detective, doesn’t mean it can’t be fooled. You just have to put some serious thought into your hide. For starters, the more decoys you have, the easier it is to disappear. The more objects the birds have to look over, the tougher it will be to find you. The guys I hunt with regularly deploy 2,000plus decoys on every hunt. And the more hunters there are in the group, the higher the decoy count rises above the 2k mark. Yes it’s a long, arduous task to individually stake 2,500 decoys into the ground. But if you want to kill snows, you gotta do what you gotta do. There’s no question layout blinds are comfortable. They’re easy on the back, they protect you from wind, snow and rain, and they’ll hide any movement you might make as a flock approaches. But my crew leaves them at home when snow goose hunting. We’ve found layout blinds make hiding more difficult. They cast unnatural shadows on sunny days and create oddlooking lumps in an otherwise flat field on overcast days. Plus, it’s usually difficult — and sometimes impossible — to effectively cover up the blind covers you eventually will have to fling open in order to sit up and shoot. We like to make ourselves part of the spread. We wear white clothing from head to toe. Almost always when snow goose hunting, we’re wearing the Tyvek suits commercial painters wear to protect their clothes when they’re working.
