Originally posted by $bowhunter$:
yea i wanna give goose hunting a try any idea how much a desent setup would cost someone?
Well that all depends on what you call decent. $200-40,000 is a good range. If you have a truck and maybe trailer to hall all the stuff you can get by with less on the high end, but I cold drop $10,000 easy on a decoy rig and accessories. At the low end if you want to field hunt and try and shoot birds close up you can build some silhouettes, silo’s, use some burlap or other camo fabric to help cover up. You can get a decent plastic short reed goose call and some instructional CD’s or DVD’s so you can learn to call decent. You also need a flag; you can make one with a stick and old black shirt. That will get you started. You can also garage sale and craig’s list for goose shells, and then there are the classifies on all the water fowl forums. From there the sky is the limit on goose hunting gear. Better decoys calls, dogs, dog food, vet bills, Blinds…………………………….. It is way worse than bow hunting when it comes to equipment believe me. My rig gets the job done most times and is what I consider minimum for decent success most days in the field. I use a layout blind camo’d to the max to match the field, and I run 36 shells on stakes, 12 sock decoys for movement when there is wind, and fill out the spread and provide the look of moving birds by using 5 doz. real geese pro I and II silo’s. This will get the job done most of the year starting with maybe 25% of that early season to all of it late season. Even with this much stuff it is hard to get those late season birds.
Now the problem with geese is that they can be kind of hard to get in your face. You need to be able to call decent and know when and how to call. You need good decoys to get them cupped and legs down otherwise they will wise up as they close the distance and see you don’t have realistic decoys on the ground. The later you get in the season the smarter they get and the harder it is to get them in close. You can have a great decoy layout and just call a little off and they will skirt you. Late season geese are very difficult to land, and can be downright difficult to even get into range even for a seasoned goose hunter who can call well and had a good decoy spread. Your best bet is early season when you can hunt family groups with mostly two older birds and a bunch of stupid youngsters. In the early season you can get by with just a doz. decoys and mediocre calling if you are where they want to go.
Your best bet late season, or anytime really with a bow, if you don’t know someone with a lot of experience, who can produce birds this time of year, is to try and see where the birds are feeding or resting. Then see where they fly out or in. Set up in some good cover where they fly low on takeoff or landing. Then do your shooting from there. In a good spot where you are not seen you could easily get a lot of shots as the groups go over. My water fowl hunting partner has them fly low over his house all the time. I would try them with arrows if I wouldn’t land them in the swamp or neighbor’s houses. I think the best options for field hunting are the right kind of pit blind with a big flip up roof, or pop-up blinds in a hay field with round bails; this would be great early season and you could likely get them to land and shoot them on the ground.
Having a big group of honkers feet down, wings cupped and inside 10 yd. is as thrilling as dropping a string on a deer any day for me, but it is far from easy to make happen without the right equipment and some experience.
If you really want to learn about goose hunting go to duck hunting chat and sign up. It is the closest thing you can find to a trad gang for water fowling.
Topic: geese gone wild (Read 531 times)
