You can add all the motion to your huge decoy spread that you want but those birds will flare 200 yards out if they see anything out of the ordinary. Think about it - you have just set a spread of 1,000 decoys to draw in some wiley old snow goose and there's a yellow shirt moving around in the middle of it. Wear the right gear and our guides won't have any trouble helping you kill birds.
There's no way that 1,000 pairs of eyes would stick around for the intrusion of a yellow shirt so why would they land anywhere in the area.
Take a look at the photo below and you'll see what I mean. On this weekend we were guiding Babe Winkelman on a snow goose hunt in South Dakota. Babe travels with a camera crew. One of the camera men hit the field wearing a yellow sweatshirt. Can you pick it out of the photo?
Now look for the 3 exposed hunters and 4 hidden hunters in the photo. We were relaxing so you can see the three hunters fairly plainly. But you won't find the other 4 hunters. At one point we had to wake Kris Winkelman up from a nap in her blind!
We use the latest low-profile ground blinds on all of our South Dakota snow goose hunts. Then we take the blinds, we rub them down with mud, and we jam the stubble straps full of corn stubble. Finally, we set the decoys so thick around the blinds that you have to feel for them in the dark. Finish the spread off with some good motion in the spread and you're set. Specklebelly geese can't resist cupping up and heading straight for the spreads.
The birds can't see the blinds and we kill birds day in - day out.
We need to stay mobile while snow goose hunting in South Dakota. We don't have the luxury (or time) to dig pits in the fields where the birds are going to be TODAY. You need to wear the right gear and slide down into our layout blinds for the big shoot!
Every day that we hunt also includes the service of a guide who does not hunt with the group. That guide spends the day driving the area looking for additional feeding fields holding flocks of snow geese. Our guides know the area well and we have met many of the property owners over the years. We speak with the owners, gain access to new fields, and move if need be to stay in the middle of the migration.
We stay hidden from the eyes of the migrating snow goose.
We set fields with big spreads and we drop low-profile layout blinds right in the middle of the decoys. That means the birds are in your face when the stretch out their feet to land.
It's not uncommon for us to have flocks of snow geese at 10 yards, cupped up with their feet down when the caller yells, "KILL THEM!"
