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Spring Goose Hunts

Who here has hunted Spring geese?

In most states, there are no limits and the flocks number in the thousands.

I'm thinking about doing a hunt in SD in a few weeks and would like your input.

I was fishing this morning and geese were all over the place. They are Canada geese and the season is over for them. They are nesting now and it won't be long before the river will have lots of goslings. They come right by us and eat clover on the bank right behind us.

It is Snow and Ross's Geese that have the extended season with no limits, no plugs, electronic recordings, etc. Canada and White-fronted are closed.

As stated above, if you get into the birds you will get tired of shooting and tired of cleaning them. It could be a great experience with the right outfitter.

Hunted the conservation season a few times (Yankton SD with Neu Outdoors, great guide service).

On a 4 day hunt, on average, you will have 1 good day, 2 slower days and a bust day. If you are lucky you will have a big day with hundreds of geese pitching in. Those days make the boring days worth it.

Conditions ranging from 75, dry and sunny to 20's and a foot of mud. I think, with the weather this year, the mud is going to be epic...

Here the snow goose season runs well after the Canada goose season. Delaware and Maryland let hunters from either state hunt snow geese with either a Maryland or Delaware license. I don't do any duck or goose hunting but will sometimes shoot a few snow geese that fly over my garden. I breast them out and to me they are fine eating.

Talked to s guy that got back from Louisiana. Bought a longer shot tube so his gun held 11, 3” shells. After being picky to shoot two Blue Geese it was game on. It rained snow geese the rest of the morning.

I was in a group of ten guys that went to South Dakota 4-5 years ago on a spring snow goose hunt. It was an outfitted hunt. I don’t recall the name of the out fitter. We split up into two groups of five plus a guide. The outfitter had 500-1000 decoys and a number of decoys were battery or wind operated to provide movement to the spread. We were about a mile to a mile and a half from a lake that was mostly white with snow geese. We had well camoed lay out blinds and unplugged shotguns. Also the outfitted had a couple eloctronic calls operating. It was a fabulous set up. We hunted all day on the first day and till about 2 pm on day two. We killed a total of 8-10 snow geese. Flocks of 10 to hundreds approached the decoys frequently. But at about 100-150 yards, they would peel off and pass us out of range. Occaisonally a dumb one would get barely into long range and a barrage of shot knocked it down. I’ve done a fair bit of goose hunting, mostly Canada’s and found it hard to believe you see 10,000s of geese and have the set up we had, and kill so few geese. By the way the other half of our group killed less than we did. I’ve heard these hunts can be highly successful, but ours sure was not.

dale06...you most likely were hunting the older breeding birds that compromise the majority of birds in the leading edge of he migration. Some of those geese are 20 years old and have been hunted since they left the arctic 7 months before. Tough customers. Juvenile birds (and the ross geese) are way easier to decoy. We've had 500,000 pass over our setups on migration days and never give the 2000 decoys a second look. last year we had a "tornado" one morning and shot 42 in 10 minutes.

Dale I’ll bet if you flew a drone above your setup and took pictures or video you’d see why they weren’t coming in.

DL, Bingo! In goose and duck hunting if the birds are there but flaring out of range you need to change your set up. Usually just hide better. Spring snow goose is feast or famine. I hunt in Arkansas and it's been pretty good this year.

I hunted with John Neu of Neu Outdoors in 2012. We hunted in southern Missouri, just north of the Arkansas line the first week of February.

In 2 1/2 days we killed 264 geese. When we got back to the motel that first evening I thought we would be cleaning geese until midnight as we had 110 geese in the back of the truck. With 8 of us plus the guide, we had them cleaned in 20 minutes, iced down and in coolers in the motel room.

One of the best hunts I have ever been on.

Guided in the spring for many years. Know most of the guys that run spreads here in S.D. I have not hunted the past two years and no plans to this year. Lots of good advice above. Send me a PM if you like Kyle with who you are planning to hunt with and I can likely tell you if they are legit or not. Lots of bad outfitters out there. This year will be a tough hunt. The conditions are going to be extremely poor and not many young birds to work with. It’s a great experience but big number days will be few and far between this spring.

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