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Goose Hunting With A Small Spread


herodrift

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This is my second season hunting goose, and aside from difficulties obtaining landowner permission, I'm struggling with having few goose decoys. More decoys aren't likely in the budget in the near future. Between myself and my hunting partner, we only have 2 dozen decoys.

We usually set up in corn/bean fields, and we have one river spot. Can anyone offer some advice on optimizing our set up with only two dozen decoys?

Thanks in advance for any tips.

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What type of decoys are you using ,full body ,silos, or shells?the main thing is concealment ,are you using layout blinds ?two dozen should be fine for early season,then you may want to make your spread bigger .You can always make your own silhouettes out of wood or that plastic sign board .I hope this helps .

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2 dozen is lots at this time of year.

Its not like the flocks coming through are much bigger.

In Saskatchewan we were dropping sets of 300 to 400 snows but the flocks were in the thousands.

To maximize a small number set them in small groups of 3 to 4 decoys with some space between the groups,

I will allow you to create a wider spread and give the look of more birds.

Silhouettes are also a great way to add tot he spread, and of you make them out of sign board you can run a coat hanger through them as a stake which can add some motion to the spread in the wind.

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I'm sure I saw goose decoys at the Dollarama a month ago ......but they may be gone now as they have a lot of stuff out for halloween and yes , even Christmas stuff lol . I'll check it out tomorrow when I get some bread & corn for lunch ..... ;)

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Half shells, half full-bodied (but these are lower quality). And no layout blinds unfortunately. We usually arrive early and throw together some natural cover. We've had some luck setting up at the edge of standing corn near the cut corn. And sometimes we set up at the edge of the field and use a ditch. My friend made a sort of ground blind but it's questionable at best. I've been thinking that maybe a layout blind is a better investment before more decoys, but neither are in the near future. My next buy is going to be a new float fishing rod, and sometimes I wonder why I got into both hunting and fishing as it seems as most time they're competing against one another.

I know that you can use smaller spreads in the early season. Unfortunately for me, I have much more time for hunting in the later part of the season.

The advice of making small groups of 3-4 sounds great, I will try that. And I haven't heard of silhouettes before, I'll check that out.

Thanks guys

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  • 2 weeks later...

Buy some 2x2 and some burlap, cost you $30 and make your self a nice little 2 person lay out blind. Keep in mind that must full bodied geese decoys have there heads straight up. As if there in water. However when geese are in fields and there heads are up like that, it's means 1 of 2 things there looking for danger or it's a dangerous place. So make sure you don't put to many of those out. The direction of the decoys makes a differance as well. Making your self a cheap makeshift layout will also help greatly because you can get out tithe middle of the fields where when your set up close to the edges it makes them more weary. I usually only field hunt with 1 dozen spaced out in a big u form and j form. I also always bring 6-12 mallard decoys and place them off to the side. Now to the makeshift lay out if you don't understand how to do it pm me. I will draw you a blue print to biuld off of. It's very easy and can fit in a car.

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