You wait eagerly for the goose hunting season to begin so you can get a few geese bagged. But you know your goose is cooked once a seemingly easy flock of them suddenly bank away and do a fly by past your blinds. You've used all of the goose hunting tips and tricks you know of to get them to decoy, but some days enough is not enough. They apparently see right through you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Or is there?
Here are a few Missouri goose hunting tricks below that could very well get you a few more geese in your bag, instead of having your proverbial goose cooked in the corn field. Remember them the next time you get down and cover up in your blind.
Let’em figure it out - gradually!
As goose hunting tips and tricks go, this one is a no-brainer, yet even veteran hunters often seem to ignore it. Any hunter will tell you that geese, like all other waterfowl, learn from experience. Most early season birds have had a few months unmolested by hunters and are the most vulnerable you'll come across throughout the season. So why use everything in your arsenal to draw them in when that's really not necessary at all.
Being at ease, they'll not be suspicious of what awaits them in the field down below. If you've scouted your field well, then a smaller decoy spread of Silhouettes, Shells or Windsocks are all you should need for decoying a flock of early flyers. Sure, after a week or so, survivors will figure out what you're up to. And that's when you change things on them again, by gradually starting to phase in the more expensive lifelike full-bodies.
Blindside 'em when you can!
We spend a lot of time and money on blinds, because traditionally that's what hunters do - pop the blinds lid and shoot! One Missouri goose hunting tricks around is to not set the blinds straight in to the kill hole at all! Sounds counter intuitive, doesn't it? Blinds are meant to get you and the geese face to face. But after a while, they figure it out, and are quickly able to spot a blind from many yards away. So why not throw them a curve ball and blindside them by setting up cross winding them!
You may be surprised at how well setting up across the wind can do. Over time, geese imprint the shapes, contours and layout of blinds in their minds. Each time they survive a volley and fly off, they remember what the blind looks like and where the danger came from. But a "cross wind" strategy may just throw them off their game, while it could step yours up a notch!
The best trick in the book: Adapt If you've been hunting for a while, you've likely heard or read many goose hunting tips and tricks from a variety of sources. But that doesn't mean all of them will work for you. At the end of the day, what matters is whether you got skunked on your goose hunt , or whether you bagged a few instead. And success will come only if you adapt those goose hunting tips and tricks to fit your situation.
