Snow Goose Season What worked and What didn't?

[IceHawk]

Well the season is over for my group we ended the season with 44 birds. All were shot over decoys in SD. The highlight of this yr was 3 banded birds! This yrs weather was sporadic to say the least. I personally don't know if I ever faced as many weather patterns hunting snows as this yr. The fields were about as sloppy as you could get but this also led to good pockets of sheet water in fields that the geese keyed in on. The bads were getting soaked a few times, wrecking some gear, getting trucks and wheelers stuck but in all seriousness this is all part of snow goose hunting. I hvae noticed they are definately figureing out E-callers as we had to change our sound patterns a few times. The one thing I was impressed with is we added some Deadly Decoy socks this yr and I'll tell you they are the ticket for windless days. I was also impressed how easy they set up in the frozen ground.

The season ended with some good memeories and I am already starting to plan next yrs strategy. We have some new ideas to try next yr so I guess it's off to the drawing board!

[Sartell Angler]

Glad you had fun IceHawk. Did the information I gave you help at all? Were the birds still around that area?

3 bands for 44 birds is pretty amazing, especially for snow geese! Heck, that is amazing for any kind of waterfowl.

[IceHawk]

Sartell- We headed S and found a few birds there were some down where you said but also alot of Jumpers so we headed N to some areas we have hunted in the past. We found a pile of birds up a ways and very little pressure so we hunted this area harder. From what I saw IMO if the weather would of played more in our favor we probably would of done better.

Alot of bands were taken this yr from what I read but we were real fortunate to get 3. One yr we had over 80 birds and only 1 band so I guess we were very lucky! Trophy birds and bands to say the least.

[carpshooterdeluxe]

what has worked for us so far...(still not done hunting) is a few different things. first off we pretty much just sat back and watched as everybody went crazy trying to figure out how to hunt the lead edge massive flocks of birds. the guys i hunt with have keyed in on smaller isolated flocks of birds away from the crowds in "non traditional" areas. we learned a few things about e caller sounds and speaker volume and placement; not really going to give up those tips though...hehe. hopefully i can get out on friday and keep honing my snow goose knowledge on the flocks of birds that nobody else seems to want to hunt!

[ChuckN]

I was curious how your hunt was Icehawk. Your hunt is over and mine's about to begin...soon. Hoping for a good juvie hunt, but this year seems to be a mess as far as the migration goes and the juvies not really hanging back like they typically do.

This season is definitely the strangest weather we've ever seen, and it's getting worse....another snow storm is upon us and our plans are changing by the minute for locations and tactics. Swell. It will be fun regardless. Always is!

[IceHawk]

Good luck Chuck go put the smack on some!

[jeff127]

Icehawk---I have only been hunting snows for 6 years, have jumped and hunted over dekes(prefer) and have been part of putting at least 400 on the ground and have yet to see a banded snow------3 in 44 is amazing!!!!

jeff

[ChuckN]

My snow hunting season was short, but sweet. I just returned from 4 great days of hunting northern Nodak with 3 good friends. It was a great 4 days....we went far enough to avoid that snow storm, not much mud, fields were fairly dry, no broken equipment and we found some localized birds and hunted them hard.

We ended up with 86 for our group, all decoying. 2 great hunts. Our first morning we hit a corn field that the birds liked and put a hurt on them. After that morning, numbers went down and we moved into a huge wheat field that held a lot of birds. The birds arrived with open wings and we had a great hunt and piled them up. That educated the birds and they boogied, but scouting the entire area didn't show us any options so we elected to stay in the same field and hope for migrants. Every morning and evening we would get birds, but the numbers were down. No goose eggs for each hunt, so I was happy.

The weather out west was quite nice and lots of migrants heading north Saturday and Sunday, and they aren't stopping. Canada is filling up with birds now.

We shot a fair amount of juvies, and saw a lot of juvies, but they were all mixed with adults in flocks. When a juvie broke from a flock to decoy you could hear the adult call them back to the group.

I think with the big snow storms week after week really messed up the migration with what we noticed. The great juvie action didn't happen and unsure if it will. Adults and juvies were mixed up good this year, unlike in the past.

[IceHawk]

Good job Chuck sounds like you had a heck of a shoot!

[GAP]

I'm going to northern NoDak this weekend! My buddy that lives up there has been piling em up over decoys