By Randy Triplett
The year was 2017, which was only six years ago but after living through these past six years, feels like a million years ago. But I digress.
We had been having a great hunting season that year, averaging eight birds per man and 45 birds per day during the regular season. But what really highlights the year — and I’ve been goose hunting now for more than 50 years — is that I had my BEST HUNT EVER in 2017.
The hunt was on one of the rare days when we were set up in a feeding field, had fog and a 10-15 mph wind. On top of that, there were plenty of young birds that year. With good shots in the field with me, we decoyed and bagged 230 birds — a limit for each man.
Another photo of a 230 bird hunt (200 snows and 30 specs).
In the world of decoying waterfowl, nothing is more important than the adult-to-juvenile ratio — especially with snow geese. Without the young grey birds, adult snow geese become almost impossible to decoy. They’re just too damn smart.
But throw a juvenile bird in the mix, and BAM. The young birds are like college freshmen crashing a fraternity kegger on a remote farm — they just can’t resist joining the party and will make a beeline for the spread.
And then it happens. Those super smart adult snow geese start having a mid-life crisis of sorts. They seem to decide that the juvenile snow geese shouldn’t get to have all the fun and nine times out of ten will follow those frat boys right into the spread as well.
Why am I telling you all of this? To let you know that we are getting reports from various sources up north that the snow geese had a good hatch. If what we are being told is accurate — and I have a good feeling it is — we should be seeing lots of juvenile birds this year.
In a nutshell, this means that regardless if there is good weather, foggy weather, high winds or a certain spread location or type of decoys, good goose hunters are going to have some wonderful hunts decoying and bagging birds this year.
So what do you say? Let’s go hunting!
Old photo of a goose hunt with LOTS of juvenile snow geese.
