Hi guys I am interested in hunting geese during the late season this year. I have property on the south branch of Potomac river in West Virginia. There are good numbers of resident geese on the river. I want to know how difficult they are to get into a decoy setup. I was planning on setting up before light with some decoys. Floaters and sitters. I was thinking about putting some on the rockbars and some back water eddies. I have never done it before. Some helpful hints would be appreciated about setting up and calling. I am a beginner but am fascinated with getting a goose of my own. Thanks guys and gals and hope your hunting season has been a success so far.

John P

Sounds like you've got a plan! I would place some decoys on the bar and maybe put some floaters a few yards out heading towards the bar. Usually with a setup like this the geese will come in and light behind the floaters. As far as the calling, if you're confident then call as much as the geese that are coming in to you. If they are real loud and carrying on then try to match them all the way in, If they are more subdued then a few clucks and moans should do the trick. If you're not real confident in your calling then you might try some flagging with a black shirt tied to a stick to get there attention then let the dekes do the rest. Good luck!

Thanks for the great info. You seem to know your stuff. You always have great stories. I am a beginning and when I say beginner I mean it..LOL. When I went on a guided trip on the Eastern shore last Jan I got hooked. My brother and I got a few ducks, but our guide was not much count. He was not hitting on a whole lot. I few marbles short. I just want to try and get a goose. I am not real great at calling and have not done much calling, I am just hoping the decoys will do the trick. Thanks again for the helpful hints. Take care and have a great waterfowl season.

John P

try to get your set up so the geese decoys are upstream of your shooting position. If you do not have a dog, this will help you retreive geese easily as they float to you instead of downstream away from you. If in a boat pls be super careful with life jackets etc. A hundred years ago when i was in your part of the country I floated the Shenandoah some and we killed geese regularly with decoys in certain places. It does not take a lot of decoys on most smaller rivers. and usually not much , if any, calling on small streams. If you set up on the lower end of an island, or any bar or creek mouth that sticks out a little in the river, that is usually where geese like to sit for some reason. alos be alert for geese from upstream swimming down in to your spread, as that happen a good bit . Morethan you want to know maybe. Alos try to be sure the boat, if any is upstram and wel hidden . Agin , easier to catch floating downstream if it comes unmoored. Here is some otehr stuff from a post a few years agoif you decide to try to hunt from a boat , or boat blind.: Do not use any boat blind with high sides on the boat in high winds; too easy to get swamped. If possible find trees to tie on firmly or use deer climbing screw in stuff to tie off on in order to keep boat from rocking, thus avoiding makeing waves and flaring birds when you move around to get set for approaching ducks. Never set up boat where you have one guy shooting over the head of the otrher guy in the boat and re-establish that rule three times before the first duck shows up; thus position boat in the tree tying so all shots are taken sideways and not taken long ways to the boat. I do not like blinds per se on a boat and do fine setting in full camo on a five gallon bucket in the floor of the boat ; camo the boat with dull paint, then use netting to cover the boat again and keep all shiny and glary things covered with netting you can sit right on top of all of that and not have to worry abuot trying to shoot over the high front of a blind or wait for the blind to drop out of the way. If you keep your face down and use face masks, and do not move as dusks work around you , you will find I think you can pick better shots than trying to get two people to simulataneously shoot over a higher blind front or trying to drop a blind front so you can shoot. Alos, the ducks do not flare as quickly becasue the movement to get to a shooting position is minimal compared to a "blind". Use nylon type netting, never burlap, as burlap aborbs water and can be a real weight issue and unwieldy to move (and it can freeze in big rock-like pieces. Life jackets at all times. (When I look back at the stupid things I did duck hunting in boats I realize how lucky I am to be alive today. ). Let Freddy shoot first at all times. Use some full body decoys that flambeau sells, then take a hammer and nails and find floating logs you can tack those stand up decoys on top of, so it looks like mallards loafing and walking around on a floating log..that is what river ducks love to do and that is a sure-fire decoy attractor on a river. with six full body decoys and a few really realistic mallard floaters and odd number of black duck decoys, again painted perfectly you can lure about any size big duck flight in to a river set up. Be sure to space your decoys so that they are more than six feet apart as delpoyed. Ducks only bunch tightly when they are uneasy or about to fly. Keep the euipment in the boat to a minimum and avoid the weight of a car battery powered spotlight if at all possible as the weight is a big problem. If yo can find a place birds really like, hunt off the bank in a scattered minin-one-man-blind set-up and stay out ofthe boat when trying to set up to shoot. Take some heavy duty lomcutters i nthe baot to clear the shooting lanes of problem limbs trees etc...also can cut river cane quickluy with one to make a snug little blind if it is available(cane is a great cover to just scatter inthe boat if you sit in the baot as I described as it breaks outlines readily and is easy to deploy. Hide the boat ABOVE you and your set up somewhere so if it breaks loose it will float by you. If you tie up a boat to a tree on a river and leave the boat, also drop out the ahnchor with hte loosely coiled anchor rope in the baot, as you neevr know when a boat will break loose andthe anchor rope will save your trip. Carry an extra propellor plus all the NUTS AND BOLTS, cotter keys and pins and lubes (and pliers and wrenches) it takes to replace it in case you lose everythign on the prop drive end. Make sure sombody in the boat knows how to change the prop on the engine of the day. Be sure somebody not in the boat and on the trip knows where you put in the river and where you parked to take out . Do not shoot tame mallards or white ducks in front of somebody's house on the river. :>)

GN, that's an incredible amount of waterfowling knowledge . . . As a newbee to waterfowling, I can tell you right now that I will re-read this again and again . . . thank you for taking the time to share it . . . there's a good bit of stuff there that I haven't read anywhere else, but it's so bloody practical! Thank you!

Also never a good idea to shoot geese in Jimmy Dean's back yard

now is it geese that won't land over the top of their own kind??

thanks guys for all the helpful info. I love the personal encounters with waterfowl. It will defently make me think about some of my set-ups. So I need to be down river of my decoys and the decoys should be pointed up river. The geese will come below the dekes and should present a shot if I get lucky enough. I can't wait to try my set-up. It may fail or not present me any geese but I sure will have had an awesome time anticipating what might happen. Thanks for getting me hooked and thanks for all the helpful info......GN especially. Take care and have a great rest of the hunting season.

John P

John...I've only been hunting waterfowl for 5-6 years now, but the addiction is strong. GN's post was originally in response to a post of mine way back when I think. His advice served me well then and continues to do so to this date. Going to throw in some of my thoughts here, as I really love hunting geese.

1. Know what you are going to do with the geese once you kill them. I'm sure there are plenty of folks who like to eat geese. If you happen to be one of those folks, not a worry. In my current circle of waterfowlers, nobody will eat them. I've only found that making jerky is the only way that I can eat them.

2. Hunting down current from your decoy spread is important if the water you hunt has any current speed that will wisk away a downed bird. Have a plan laid out before you down the first bird as to how you are going to retrieve it. Shallow water is not an issue. Running to a wounded bird with a loaded shotgun on slippery rocks in 1 foot of water can be. In deep water, know how to get to the boat fast, how to get it launched fast and realize that if you paddle downstream 100 yards to pick up a downed bird, well, you've got to paddle back upstream against the current to get back to your hunting location. You can sometimes get out of the current flow and make upstream progress easier.

3. Geese don't like to come into their landing zone and fly over the decoys landing in front of them. They want to land behind the decoys and swim in to them most of the time. I'm not talking about circling birds trying to work down, but once the birds commit and are coming in for a landing, haven't seen one yet fly over the backs of the decoys and land say within 20 yards.

4. Most waterfowl will commit to a landing with the wind in their face. Keep this in mind when creating the X where you want the birds to land. I have seen waterfowl commit and come in all different ways with relation to the wind, but given the choice, they much prefer to have the wind in their face to gain the control on the landing.

5. Mimic the sounds the geese are making when they are circling looking at your spread. Once they are locked, cut back considerably on the calling, only using short groans and clucks if anything. If they are commited, let them come (and something I have a VERY hard time doing).

6. There is nothing wrong with pass shooting at flying geese if within range and clearly not "working" your spread. The real joy for me in waterfowling is getting birds to commit and drop into your created landing zone. I'm known in my circle as a ground swatter, prefering to have the birds actually land and then shoot them. Most waterfowlers shoot when the birds are about 2-3 feet off the water. So, develop some patients and kill birds commited to your spread. If you taking passing shots, which I still do, remember that a shot bird may not drop in your X and take that into consideration on retrieval plans.

7. If you kill birds on the initial volley but a single or some birds escape, be aware that some birds may fly away but circle and come back to see what happened to their mates. This is especially true on a pair where you leave a single flying bird. I've killed many a goose on the comeback. Also, if you see a single goose flying, get ready cause likely they will want to find friends to sit down with. They are flock oriented.

8. I've never tried flagging, but want to add it to my arsenal. Large decoy spreads will get their attention too. But being where geese want to be naturally is better than any decoy out their. Scout and see where the birds go and try to be there.

9. Geese seem to fly later in the morning than ducks. Ducks...you have to be ready to shoot right at legal shooting light. Geese seem to get more active about an hour later for some reason, atleast in the areas that I hunt.

10. When placing decoys, try to place them facing in various different positions, making smaller 4-12 family groups within your spread. One of the hardest things for me early on, and still is sometimes, is leaving a big enough X for them to land in and keeping that X where you want it in relation to your hide. We have geese that land in the bigger open water and swim in more often than landing in our created X. We still bring home geese but nothing like having birds land where you want them to land.

Hope this helps some. Have fun. Be safe. And, if you really like to eat geese, let me know so we'll have a source for our birds!

Wow . . . this thread has become a virtual "Primer on Goose Hunting in Rivers"

Dale has moved to the head of the class here . I might add it is as important to know what your gun will do here as in turkey hunting. Pattern it with the shot you plan on shooting. Some of the steel and hevishot goose loads will pattern very very effectively way out there with improved cylinder; actually better than super full tubes in most cases.. Hevishot is really the way to go on geese if your gun accomodates it. Life Jackets, go to bed thinking about them and get up on hunt day thinking about them.

Life jackets. Yes...YES... I can attest to the effectiness of HeviShot. My kill rate improved dramatically when I switched to HeviShot. Save the steel for finishing off cripples. Yea, at $2.00 a shot it's expensive. But unless you hunt and shoot at alot of waterfowl in a given season, it will result in a higher kill ratio without question. And there is this issue of time. Think about your travel time, setup time, etc. when planning a hunt. Add a minimum of 30 minutes to whatever you calculate so that you have a little wiggle time built in to your hunt. One thing I have learned in waterfowling is that something always seems to not go as planned. Boats, motors, trailers, trailer lights, decoys, dogs, lights, water levels, all of this in cold wet conditions. Well, its a recipe for issues and if you build in a little extra time in each hunt you'll be better prepared to address whatever comes up. Any time you make it on and off the water in the winter safely, it's a good hunt. If you see waterfowl, it is a great hunt. Don't messure a hunt by birds killed. Just as in turkey hunting, getting birds to commit to a spread and land is the challenge. Killing them is just the icing on the cake.