Goose Hunting Decoy Placement is not hard......
(not written by me, but makes me think about his comment "geese get decoy shy after seeing the same Goose Hunting Decoy Placement")
Goose Hunting Decoy Placement is not hard, but can be the make or break in your Goose Hunting Adventure.
When putting out decoys there are several Things to consider, but don’t over think it. You are dealing with a bird that has a brain the size of a pea. I continually fall into the trap of trying to over-think a gooses needs and some days drive myself and my hunting partners crazy with my over analyzation. We will discuss some things here that should help you in avoiding or at least recognizing this pit fall.
one of the first things to determine is are the geese that you are hunting being hunted by other hunters or are you one of the only groups to be hunting the birds that you decoy. If you hunt almost anywhere in the continental U.S. you can assume that you are not the only group targeting the birds in your area. This can play a role in how you look at Decoy Placement.
You read a lot of articles in hunting magazines about Decoy Placement, and see the standard "J" or fish-hook pattern or the crescent moon pattern. While these Goose Hunting Decoy Placements have accounted for countless geese over the years, I like to be a little more creative in the way I approach Decoy Placement. In the area that I hunt, geese quickly get burned out on the same old same old. The other factor that I feel you need to make the standard Goose Hunting Decoy Placements work well, is a constant wind. Where I hunt, while the wind is predominantly out of the West at the time of the year that goose hunting occurs, there are many days at that time of the year when there is little to no wind.
For those reasons in Goose Hunting Decoy Placement I try to think more in terms of providing geese multiple areas to land or funnel into your shooting zone as apposed to only providing , and counting on one landing area. Again that is not to say that the standard Goose Hunting Decoy Placements won’t work, I just feel that there are other alternatives that will help increase both your enjoyment and the number of geese that you bag.
In Goose Hunting Decoy Placement I like to set out some what of a modified X type pattern. This allows for geese to approach from multiple directions if there is not much wind or the wind is changing directions frequently during the day. There is nothing mor frustrating than having the wind change direction and your Decoy Placement having to be completely changed to accommodate this change in weather conditions. With the X type pattern the wind can change and with little to no additional work your Decoy Placement can still be attracting geese.
Because I am a big believer that geese get decoy shy after seeing the same Goose Hunting Decoy Placement day after day, I never set my decoys the same way twice in a row from the same blind set up. Although I always allow for geese to have multiple ways to approach the landing area, I will constantly change the on the ground set up. We may have large family groups leading to the landing area, or we may just put out only a couple of dozen decoys.
I also try to observe as many real geese as I can, and observe how they are on the ground and how other geese approach and land among feeding birds. This real time on the ground observation should also give you ideas on how to improve your own Goose Hunting Decoy Placement.
Be creative, let the geese tell you what they want, and don’t fall into the same Decoy Placement as the group in the next field.
Goose Hunting Decoy Placement is not hard, but can be the make or break in your Goose Hunting Adventure.
When putting out decoys there are several Things to consider, but don’t over think it. You are dealing with a bird that has a brain the size of a pea. I continually fall into the trap of trying to over-think a gooses needs and some days drive myself and my hunting partners crazy with my over analyzation. We will discuss some things here that should help you in avoiding or at least recognizing this pit fall.
one of the first things to determine is are the geese that you are hunting being hunted by other hunters or are you one of the only groups to be hunting the birds that you decoy. If you hunt almost anywhere in the continental U.S. you can assume that you are not the only group targeting the birds in your area. This can play a role in how you look at Decoy Placement.
You read a lot of articles in hunting magazines about Decoy Placement, and see the standard "J" or fish-hook pattern or the crescent moon pattern. While these Goose Hunting Decoy Placements have accounted for countless geese over the years, I like to be a little more creative in the way I approach Decoy Placement. In the area that I hunt, geese quickly get burned out on the same old same old. The other factor that I feel you need to make the standard Goose Hunting Decoy Placements work well, is a constant wind. Where I hunt, while the wind is predominantly out of the West at the time of the year that goose hunting occurs, there are many days at that time of the year when there is little to no wind.
For those reasons in Goose Hunting Decoy Placement I try to think more in terms of providing geese multiple areas to land or funnel into your shooting zone as apposed to only providing , and counting on one landing area. Again that is not to say that the standard Goose Hunting Decoy Placements won’t work, I just feel that there are other alternatives that will help increase both your enjoyment and the number of geese that you bag.
In Goose Hunting Decoy Placement I like to set out some what of a modified X type pattern. This allows for geese to approach from multiple directions if there is not much wind or the wind is changing directions frequently during the day. There is nothing mor frustrating than having the wind change direction and your Decoy Placement having to be completely changed to accommodate this change in weather conditions. With the X type pattern the wind can change and with little to no additional work your Decoy Placement can still be attracting geese.
Because I am a big believer that geese get decoy shy after seeing the same Goose Hunting Decoy Placement day after day, I never set my decoys the same way twice in a row from the same blind set up. Although I always allow for geese to have multiple ways to approach the landing area, I will constantly change the on the ground set up. We may have large family groups leading to the landing area, or we may just put out only a couple of dozen decoys.
I also try to observe as many real geese as I can, and observe how they are on the ground and how other geese approach and land among feeding birds. This real time on the ground observation should also give you ideas on how to improve your own Goose Hunting Decoy Placement.
Be creative, let the geese tell you what they want, and don’t fall into the same Decoy Placement as the group in the next field.
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