While there are many methods, preferences, and hunting strategies, here are some of our favorite and most used types of decoys and decoy spreads trusted by hunters nationwide. Apply these tips for your next waterfowl hunt!
Understanding Goose Behavior
Depending on the available food and unfrozen water, some geese will stick relatively close to home, while others will travel miles to find more habitable conditions. So, in some cases, there is a good chance that the geese you are hunting in September are the same geese you see in January.
The more a flock of geese encounters hunters, the smarter they get, so you need to hunt strategically with your decoys.
When geese encounter other geese on the ground, it signals that there is a safe place to land with enough food and water for the group. Additionally, in the mid to late season, new feeding areas and landing spots for geese are created once crops have been harvested.
Geese are habitual and will generally return to the same areas until they are shot at enough times or they run out of food. Your best bet is to drive around looking for flocks of geese and follow them.
Once you find the general area they are feeding in, pull up HuntWise to access landowner names, boundaries, and contact information and get permission to hunt that particular piece of land. HuntWise will also show you the peak movement time of the week for a specific hunting area, including the temperature, weather, and wind direction, helping you further prepare for your hunt.
Why Decoys?
Once you have access to a particular piece of hunting land, it’s time to get geese to land where you’re hunting. That’s where decoys come in.
Decoys typically mimic geese doing three different things: swimming, feeding, and resting. Depending on where you hunt, goose behaviors may differ slightly, but when it comes to decoys, remember that the more realistic, the better.
The challenge is that geese learn quickly, have incredible vision, and adapt to hunting strategies they have encountered. So if they have been shot at a few times, everything changes, and getting them to come down and finish takes convincing.
Decoys have come a long way from the days of handcrafted decoys made out of reeds used by Native Americans and the carved and painted wood and cork decoys that came after that. Nowadays, there are a myriad of decoys with a range of price points and body styles, so knowing the difference between decoys and their particular uses is crucial.
Hunters continuously debate the quantity or quality of decoys, but here are some things to remember. Early in the season, you can get away with putting small family groups of less polished-looking decoys. Later in the season, geese have been pressured, and are therefore more wary of anything that looks less than realistic.
Hunting later in the season means you should put all of your decoys out and your best-looking decoys front and center of your spreads. You can still use your not-so-great decoys, but you should position them closer to you, so your best decoys entice the geese before coming across the less attractive ones.
