Jumping into Goose Hunting

In order to get out into the woods just a little earlier in the fall, I decided to try goose hunting this year. I’m starting from zero. I’ve never been goose hunting before. However, with the nuisance population of geese in Connecticut, I figured I might try to reduce the surplus population.


Not knowing anything in particular about goose hunting, I decided to just jump right in. I bought a cheap goose call and 12 cheap decoys. The decoys were just about the cheapest available. They are stackable and are held into the ground with plastic stakes. They seem realistic enough. A piece of burlap would serve as my blind. Everything else was stuff I already had from deer, pheasant, and turkey hunting.

Since I don’t have a retriever, I can’t hunt over water unless I plan on taking a swim myself. Therefore, I concentrated on fields. My first goose hunt was in a half-harvested cornfield. I set up the decoys in the middle of the cut field, and I went and hid in the standing corn. To my eye, the spread looked good. However, the only geese I saw were in the very early morning while I was setting up the decoys. At the time I did not figure that these would be the only geese to fly over, but even if I was at the ready for them, the fog was so think at that hour that I could barely make them out.

By my second attempt at goose hunting, the deer archery season had started. The cornfield I planned on trying already had 3 trucks parked in the lot when I got there. In order to not disturb the deer hunters, I decided to move on. I went to another location that consisted of grassy fields and several small ponds. I had seen geese in this location before. I set up my decoys and sat. Several sets of geese flew over my set up, but none showed too much interest. They simply passed over. One couple came low enough for me to attempt a shot into the stratosphere, but they were truly out of range. At least on this day, I did see honkers throughout most of the day. Three ducks landed on the pond next to me, so that game me confidence that I was communicating danger to the birds flying overhead.

The season ends this week, so my foray into goose hunting will end unsuccessfully this year. To the non-hunting observer, it seems it would be easy to harvest a bird that is so plentiful in public parks and semi-urban areas all over the state. Finding birds at the city park is different than trying to get them to land in the middle of a field a rural area where shooting is allowed.

I’ll probably give goose hunting another try next year. If nothing else, I got a chance to get some good reading done while enjoying an early fall sunrise. On to bigger and hopefully better hunting seasons!