June/July 09

Waterfowling North America
Mistakes: Goose Hunting
by Doug Larsen

n keeping with the theme of this issue, I have taken on the task of looking at some of the most common mistakes that goose hunters make. While I see plenty of things done wrong and hear about hunts that go wrong over the course of the season, I am quite qualified to lead this discussion, as I have been at the epicenter of many a cluster myself. As I considered this topic, I first looked at obvious things, and then I considered other pretty common mistakes. Then I asked some goose-hunting experts.

Let’s start with the obvious. I know you have heard this story, as I have. Your buddy calls you after the hunt and says, “We got three Canadas, but we could have had six or eight, but Ol’ Duke got excited when a couple of groups of geese got close, and he whined and squirmed around and flared them.” There is an obvious solution to the problem, and Ol’ Duke needs more training to be quiet and steady, and he needs to be covered up and/or trained to hunt from a dog blind so he’s not squirming around. Not only is a steady, quiet dog a more productive hunting partner, but when hunting from pits or layout blinds, a loose dog is in peril. Allowing Duke to break and run in front of the guns is akin to allowing him to break into traffic. Sooner or later it will catch up with him.

Now a couple common mistakes. One I actually see quite often is made by good goose hunters with good decoys and equipment who are usually set up in just the right spot. They have it all figured out and decoy birds right into the kill hole. These guys are calling and flagging and before you know it, geese are backpedaling 10 yards away when the doors on four or five ground blinds flip open, and everyone unloads with the wrong choke/load combination on point blank geese with 3- or 3½-inch loads of BBs or BBBs from an after-market choke tube. The trouble is, at 10 yards the patterns from that combination of choke/load is about the diameter of your truck’s radiator hose, and instead of the group raining geese, one or two are scraped down as the birds climb out of the spread, where at 35 yards the patterns open up and become more effective.

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