# snows evolving



## dust em (Oct 7, 2007)

I was us in ND a couple of days early for the snows. My brother from Minot was up in the Darling area this past weekend. Looks like the migration was down. He set up decoys about a mile from the refuge. Birds lifted for over an hour. Every single bird followed the same flight line they didn't even get a single retarded juvenile to break from the flight up the river they were taking. They were using 3,000 texas rags and some realwing decoys. Not even a looker!
The more amazing part was the went looking for the birds and found one whole section white with snows about two miles off of the refuge. There were cars around the field. My brother knew that somesone wos going to kick them and figured that it would be a good time to move between the geese and the refuge for some pass shooting. The first part he figured correct. There was a single shot and the birds lifted. The next part he never imagined would happen. The birds swarmed to the middle fot the field and "tornadoed" upward. They kept on rotating upward and while a couple of hunters were able to "bang" at a couple of outside birds. The main groug "tornadoed" up to about 300 yards and then lall eft the field in the same direction. He said that he would have never believed it if he hadns't seen it with his own eyes. It is amazing how the birds were able to figure this out!
I guess at the goosefest in Kenamre a lot of the big producers got their birds by jumpshooting and pass shooting. Hardly andy birds decoyed. Sounds like the winner won by jumping a slough and shooting them in the water. They swam for a couple of hours picking up birds. Must have been pretty cold water.


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## dosch (May 20, 2003)

Snows have been doing that for years. Thats why my snow goose decoys went back into the rafters after saturday's hunt. :eyeroll:


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## water_swater (Sep 19, 2006)

I would completely agree that geese have gotten smarter in the last few years, I think all the spring presssure really teaches them alot. Without an e-call now things are tough, another group was running an e-call with 1/6th of the spread we had. Neither of us got any serious looks but whenever the snows got downwind of that noise it was an automatic turn even if their wings were locked with them looking down on us. Last year the migration never gave me a serious shot to shoot a snow goose, things definitely seem much different in the two years since. Juvies arent even juvies anymore.


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## dblkluk (Oct 3, 2002)

If you got shot at every time your feet hit the ground, you'd get pretty smart, pretty quick too.. :wink:


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## KEN W (Feb 22, 2002)

what you saw is nothing new.....as said above.....they have been doing this for years here in ND.


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## barebackjack (Sep 5, 2006)

I second all of whats been said.

Anybody want to buy a bunch of snow goose decoys?


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## Leo Porcello (Jul 10, 2003)

Its a shame that guys don't realize how nice snows decoy when they have not been jumped and jumped and jumped.

I am pretty sure I know what field your talking about. It was loaded. I hunted it Sat morning and had no less than 12 rigs come and when they saw I was there they moved on. Then a group of 3 vehicles came and down winded me. They sat on rock pile next to the prairie trail and parked their vehicles 150 yards from their spread. HMMMMMM I wonder why them snows did not decoy. :eyeroll:

There was well over a mile and a half of field up wind of me that those birds were using that those guys could have set up in and probably may have had some success. Oh well at least I got some great exercise and I had a pair about land on me that I wiffed. :lol:


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## Leo Porcello (Jul 10, 2003)

BTW I heard the same about the winners at the GooseFest. That is why I never stop on Kenmare for gas or anything else. The GooseFest rules need to change. In my opinion they promote blasting birds by any means possible. They can take their KillFest and stick it!


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## dust em (Oct 7, 2007)

I don't think it was the same field. It was just my brother and a friend of his. There are some real idiots out there who don't know how to hunt or care if they ruin the hunt for someone else who has set up a spread.

Decoying snow geese has always been a hit or miss proprosition. It is hard to decoy snows when you have a thousand pair of eyes looking down at you.

What I found amazing is that the birds tornadoed upwards to advoid the hunting pressure after shot at . I have always seen them "high tailing" out of there when the first rounds go off. For them to take the time to tornado up to gain elevation while being shot at is something new to me.


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## h2ofwlr (Feb 6, 2004)

If their were no road shooters and jump shooters and roost busters--they would indeed be decoyable. But these lazy assed guys make it impossible for the Snows to relax and feed, and that is what is needed for successful Snow hunting over decoys.

I used to watch for hours 10s of thousands feeding in the afternnon all with in 100yds of me. I got a huge education watching the geese of where approaching Snows landed in the flock.

Best thing I ever did was get up on a big hill and look down on the flock a 1/2 mile away so I could see birds eye level of what a relaxed feeding flock looked like.

Good luck doing that now a days with all the recent jump shooters and road hunters. And ALL this change has occurred in the last 12 years, most since the Spring Snow seaon brought out the clowns that were and are too lazy to learn the trade and art of decoying Snow geese.


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## dfisher (Oct 12, 2007)

I think the snow goose is evolving into a super goose. I think they see so much and have so much pressure on them, that they are becoming so wary, that they catch up with us hunters and our tricks, very quickly. This has been a slowly evolving process that's undoubtedly been passed from generation to generation.

My farmer buddy, Rodney, even says that they aren't the birds they were 20 or 30 years ago, when he use to hunt them with about 12 dozen shells and 400 bleach bottles to fill in and decoy spread. He says that they decoyed the heck out of them back then, but now they are very hard to decoy.

Tommy Brightnose, a chubby Cree, and I decoyed them in the low scrub land around Hudson Bay with 6 decoys set up in a blueberry patch. More like grouse or quail cover really, but in they came to have a berry. Now, when they get to ND, you can't even get a young one to work 3000 decoys! What's that tell you? Maybe they don't get bothered by man much when they are on the tundra, and disturbed way too much when they hit the grain fields. Also, maybe, they catch on quick!

Jump shooting snow geese isn't going to end. To many fella's think that it's the only way to kill these geese and, sadly, too many guys think way too much about killing, killing, killing, when they go out. It doesn't take a lot of effort to load a shotgun and sneak out into a field for some, more than likely, out of range jump shooting. On the other hand, being creative, scouting out the birds, and then trying to figure out how to get set up for a good decoy shoot does take some time and thought. Unfortunately, that's a lot more than some want, or are going to put into hunting the geese from beyond the north wind.

Good hunting,
Dan


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## goosebusters (Jan 12, 2006)

The thing with snows that gets me the most and the reason I truly believe that they become so smart is there numbers, not the whole 1000 eyes thing it is just this. When you fly in a flock of 3000 lets say, you get shot at while sitting right off the road in North Dakota and let's say 12 of your flock mates are now riding in the back of a pickup. 2982 of your flockmates will now no longer sit near a road or sit still when a vehicle approaches. Then in the morning you fly to a field where 1000 headless geese are feeding already and you don't hear a sound, you commit, but then all of a sudden 7 of your flockmates get blasted. 2985 of you guys will never go into 1000 sticks on bags or a silent group of geese again. It just isn't like Canadas where 5 come in and your group shoots five. That I believe is the reason for their intelligence. Also, I wonder how much of a difference it makes that they can use ecallers in Canada and we can't. If they are getting shot at over decoys that sound like geese, then how could we possibly expect to decoy those same geese using manual or no calls.


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## bandman (Feb 13, 2006)

> Also, I wonder how much of a difference it makes that they can use ecallers in Canada and we can't.


Well, the southern boys like to put a target on us for using robos so it's a very legit proposal and an obvious one at that. We don't want to be ones to make excuses though do we?  oke:

Let's just put it this way; it doesn't make things any easier, but it is what it is.


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## dfisher (Oct 12, 2007)

goosebusters said:


> The thing with snows that gets me the most and the reason I truly believe that they become so smart is there numbers, not the whole 1000 eyes thing it is just this. When you fly in a flock of 3000 lets say, you get shot at while sitting right off the road in North Dakota and let's say 12 of your flock mates are now riding in the back of a pickup. 2982 of your flockmates will now no longer sit near a road or sit still when a vehicle approaches. Then in the morning you fly to a field where 1000 headless geese are feeding already and you don't hear a sound, you commit, but then all of a sudden 7 of your flockmates get blasted. 2985 of you guys will never go into 1000 sticks on bags or a silent group of geese again. It just isn't like Canadas where 5 come in and your group shoots five. That I believe is the reason for their intelligence. Also, I wonder how much of a difference it makes that they can use ecallers in Canada and we can't. If they are getting shot at over decoys that sound like geese, then how could we possibly expect to decoy those same geese using manual or no calls.


That's a good point. They do catch on quickly to new things that we hunters try.

Another thing that I think makes snows so hard, is that they are almost, in a way, like mallards, and while certainly not as easily convinced as a flock of mallards, they are very gregarious in nature. They want to stick with the flock and that makes it hard to break a single, pair, or small bunch away from a large flock.

I can tell you, from my experience with them in Hudson Bay, that when they are flying around in family sized flocks, they are very easy to decoy.
It's when they start to hang out together that they start to get tough. By the time they reach NoDak, they are pretty well bullet proof from the sound of things.


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## scissorbill (Sep 14, 2003)

Been saying it for years,this idiotic spring hunt is having the opposite effect that was intended. Constant pressure and harrassment is contributing to less success in the fall. IMO Spring hunt is a major ,major boondoggle for multiple reasons.


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## KEN W (Feb 22, 2002)

So when should the season close?It has been arbitrarily set to close on March 9th in the past.Why?.....they are just getting to the Dakotas at that time.Why not Jan.1 or April 1? Or anytime in between.Because states south of here would scream bloody murder yet they are the ones complaining that the birds are getting tough to decoy.

It is always OK if it doesn't affect where you are.


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## barebackjack (Sep 5, 2006)

scissorbill said:


> Been saying it for years,this idiotic spring hunt is having the opposite effect that was intended. Constant pressure and harrassment is contributing to less success in the fall. IMO Spring hunt is a major ,major boondoggle for multiple reasons.


I agree with you somewhat. The spring season does make hunting tough in the fall. But even so, the big number days still come in the spring.

Lets face it, even before the spring season was enacted, fall snows were tough in the fall depending on conditions, weather, pressure, juvie hatch, etc. In high pressure falls regardless of spring hunting, snows will be tough. When every tom, dick, and harry is out running and gunning at every flock within 100 yards, the hunting will be tough.

Last fall was our best fall on snows in in six years. Why?,.....good hatch and less pressure than this year (didnt see nearly the ditch pigs last year as I have this year, but saw alot more decoy spreads.....made for better hunting).

Pressure is the thing that makes hunting tough the most, and I think its immediate pressure (fall for fall hunting, spring pressure for spring hunting) that has the greatest effect.

Last year I personaly did not witness any roost busts, and only saw several groups of ditch pigs all season, this season I see trucks hauling a** and guys bailing out 8-10 times a day. I have also already witnessed about a dozen roost busts.
I did see alot of decoy hunters last year (every day), much more than this year (one so far), but even with all these decoy spreads out, the hunting was still good.


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## scissorbill (Sep 14, 2003)

Close it Jan.1 Let them scream. The managers of the past at least had enough common sense to realize there is a time to hunt and a time to let the birds and animals rest. It is common knowledge that birds start pairing up in January. Not these clowns today its all about kill numbers and license sales and to hell with the resource.


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## bowhunter04 (Nov 7, 2003)

Isn't that the whole point of the conservation season though? I didn't think it was about making it better for the hunters. I thought it was about keeping the birds moving so they have less body fat when the get up north so they have smaller hatches. I think what you are all saying is that the spring season is doing exactly what it was planned to do. It never was about giving hunters better opportunities. It was about cutting back on snow goose numbers.


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## dakotashooter2 (Oct 31, 2003)

Snows ARE a totally different bird from Canadas and it is true that flock size has a major impact on the ability to decoy birds. A few hear have blasted jump shooting for the pressure it puts on birds but it does have a few positive effects for decoyers. When birds are harrased quite a bit there comes a point when the WANT to get down and will often drop their guard a bit making them more vulnerable. Jump shooting also splits up the birds into smalled groups that are easier to decoy. A decoyer is more likely to pull in 1-5 snows than 20-30.

Two of use were out last Sunday and had about 17-18 dozen shells, silhouettes and socks set out. There were plenty of birds but the flocks were all large (a couple hundred to a couple thousand) and flying high. 
Initially we had little wind and no movenment in the decoys and could not draw even a few pairs we saw to come in. Later the wind picked up and still no luck. We saw large groups of birds getting up and down all morning but heard very little shooting. Finally about 1:30 a flock of 150-200 birds zeroed in on us and decided they wanted in. They circled three times getting louder each time and dropping elevation and we finally opened up with about 20 birds in range. We still have no clue why that flock suddenly wanted in. The only thing that changed was that the sun poked its head out for about 10 minutes which in the past has normally been a bad thing. Snow goose hunting has become so random.


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## KEN W (Feb 22, 2002)

bowhunter04 said:


> Isn't that the whole point of the conservation season though? I didn't think it was about making it better for the hunters. I thought it was about keeping the birds moving so they have less body fat when the get up north so they have smaller hatches. I think what you are all saying is that the spring season is doing exactly what it was planned to do. It never was about giving hunters better opportunities. It was about cutting back on snow goose numbers.


You are exactly correct.That is what the Federal wardens told me when the conservation seasons were opened.They wanted them constantly harrassed. Bring on the jump-shooters.They don't want them to build up fat reserves.Problem is,they spend the last couple of weeks in north-central Manitoba and Sask. before finally leaving for the tundra and get very little hunting pressure.


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## barebackjack (Sep 5, 2006)

dakotashooter2 said:


> A few hear have blasted jump shooting for the pressure it puts on birds but it does have a few positive effects for decoyers. When birds are harrased quite a bit there comes a point when the WANT to get down and will often drop their guard a bit making them more vulnerable. Jump shooting also splits up the birds into smalled groups that are easier to decoy. A decoyer is more likely to pull in 1-5 snows than 20-30.


I gotta disagree with EVERYTHING you said right there.

All non-stop harrasing of the birds does is 1)make them as jumpy as helll, and 2) push them out of an area faster.

I have never seen jump shooting split up birds drasticaly. Theres 20K in a field, they get jumped, and 19,999 birds cyclone up and head out. You may occasionaly get one or two lost ones, but not much, and its a one time deal. Or 50K in a field get broken up into two flocks of 25K, either way you dont have much luck decoying those big flocks.

Some of the best decoy shoots ive had in the fall have been with real flocks in the immediate area on the ground that are LEFT ALONE. You get some good small flock trading action towards late morning, much more consistant than somebody busting the birds and you getting one or two loners. When those birds get busted, its over.

Jumping birds is the worst thing that can happen in an area that your trying to decoy. Pass shooting aint much better.


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## E (Oct 5, 2005)

I completely agree with barebackjack. On a couple hunts this year we had two fields around us that were holding snows which allowed us to decoy the small groups that were flying back and forth. That gave us consistent action for several hours each morning and it helped that nobody tried to jump them. Even though we were successful, I think we also would have done better if there wasn't people shooting at them the moment they lifted off their roost in the morning causing them to go sky high right off the bat. I just don't see the fun in that.


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## dfisher (Oct 12, 2007)

dakotashooter2 said:


> Snows ARE a totally different bird from Canadas and it is true that flock size has a major impact on the ability to decoy birds. A few hear have blasted jump shooting for the pressure it puts on birds but it does have a few positive effects for decoyers. When birds are harrased quite a bit there comes a point when the WANT to get down and will often drop their guard a bit making them more vulnerable. Jump shooting also splits up the birds into smalled groups that are easier to decoy. A decoyer is more likely to pull in 1-5 snows than 20-30.
> 
> That's a good point too. People blast jump shooters, but really, in my opinion, it makes or keeps the birds moving. Should make scouting just about a thing of the past too. I mean how can you scout a field when you have a few thousand geese that you knw are gonna, more then likely, get jumped. Might as well set up on a flyway, or blind, in an area that is holding a lot of birds, and take your chances. I thnik when they are being moved and are hungry, that they will give decoys a good, hard look. Why wouldn't they? They are looking for a safe place to feed and you're decoys are suppose to represent that. Might be the new wrinkle in snow hunting in times to come.
> 
> ...


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## Goosepride (Sep 29, 2003)

I don't have a problem with jump shooters...As long as cripples are picked up, that's fine with me.

To each their own...not everyone has the time to do all the scouting needed to decoy, but they do have the time to get out on a Saturday morning here and there to find some birds...I don't have a problem with that. Some of those guys enjoy the outdoors more anyway because they just enjoy getting out. To them they're not wrecking someone's decoy hunt, they are just finally getting a chance to get out an hunt. I have no problem with that.

Some of the best memories I have of goose hunting are in fact jump shooting...I'm not a big jump shooter now, but I certainly don't have a problem with it. It's fun sitting outside 20K of geese while thousands more drop in and you just sit there and watch...


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## dakotashooter2 (Oct 31, 2003)

I'm not saying jumpshooting is ideal under every situation. Generally if you are on the edge of the migration route (where I often hunt) pressure is considerably lighter so a little movement of birds is helpful. You're also correct that jumping large flocks does not always break them up but if the conditions are right, in the confusion caused by thousands of birds getting up many times smaller bunches will break off, usually juvies, making them vulnerable.

I have hunted large flocks of birds between feeding and resting or watering areas with equal amounts of success/unsuccess. Even undisturbed birds can be a crapshoot.

I rarely jump birds anymore. I actually prefer to jump small flocks of 50-300 birds when I do. It is usually easier to get close because they are not so spread out. I also prefer high winds cause it keeps the birds low, hides movement and causes birds to land in low areas out of the wind also making them easier to sneak on. Often you'll only drop a couple of birds but there are times you'll get a lot more. I've had a fair share of sneaks that got me close enough to drop 5-6 birds my best being 11 birds with 3 shots (3" BBs from a cyliner bore at about 30 yards in a 30 mph wind). Admittedly most jump shooters seem to be happy just to get the birds up and pray for any kind of a shot but there is somethething satisfying belly crawling 200 yards and getting within 30 yards before you jump them and take a shot. I like to watch for a while and pick a couple of specific birds before I flush them.

How many times have you seen every bird in the area pile into one field and remain there undisturbed till the end of shooting hours? Though according to some this NEVER happens. Or even if they do come of in small bunches all day they either are sky high or all go off to the same water or roost giving maybe a couple of the 8 or 10 decoyers in the area, who were first in the field, any opportunity. Though if they are headed for water they are not likely to drop in for a look anyway. You might get them to look on the way back but are they going to choose a flock of 200-500 decoys or a flock of 5000 live birds to set down in (remember they are not Canadas)?

Snow goose hunting requires adaptability. There is no "best " way. The only thing predicable about snow geese is that they are unpredictable. The biggest challenge is to know when and where to use what tactic that will not only provide the individual with a few birds but allow for the same opportunity tommorrow.


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## dfisher (Oct 12, 2007)

I think I read or heard somewhere that the snows have virtually no springtime pressure in the provinces before going back on the tundra. They probably fill up pretty good before going back to nest.
Good topic and good opinions. 
Dan


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