Quote:
Originally Posted by
sell33 
| I don't know how well goose hunting would work without decoys. I would say your best bet would be to find some sitting somewhere and try to jump hunt them. That would be my choice without decoys. Still hard to do but if your sneaky enough you get a good chance sometimes |
This early season, around here anyway, is to control the non-migrant population. SO, decoys are a joke to these fat, corn and loaf bread fed slobs.
In any event, my hunting buddy and I got out on the Tennessee River in a small boat, and just cruised around, we found the geese to be WARY of our presence, but not alarmed. Even after we had bagged 4 of them, they would simply fly to the other side of the same island, over and over. They were able to shelter themselves in some water weeds, which we couldn't navigate as quickly as they could. So, we gave up after chasing the 5th goose for 100 yards under hand power. In any event, we'll put one of us off on the bank next time, so the other can herd them into the bank with the boat, and the man on land can outrun them as the scuttle up and down the shore in the water weeds.
So, we bagged 5 with no decoys, calls, or camo. We could have gotten more, but we were tired of paddling, and cleaning them would have been too much work on such a warm day. Yeah, these aren't your typical geese. TOUGH as tanks though.
Before anyone scolds me on my sportsmanship, we followed the letter and spirit of the law. We didn't fire while the boat was in motion, nor anything else unscrupulous. We DID shoot geese before they had a chance to fly, but bare in mind that this season is about population control, and food in the freezer. We have several hundred non-migrant geese in these 2 counties alone, not pets, not clipped, not cared for or desired, wild animals, and they wreck public parks and wild ecosystems left and right.
I believe in being sporting with wild game, but these guys need to be thinned, and I need the meat.
. The Tennessee River is just too dang big, and thickly wooded. They have NO reason to come to one particular spot or another, and they won't see your decoys unless they get almost close enough to shoot anyway. This contributes to the overpopulation, that and the fact that the deer management areas plant hundreds of acres of unharvested corn.
