Any Goose Hunters Out There?
 

Tomorrow starts Coastal Migratory Canada Goose season in Maryland. This is the first season I've owned property on the water in Maryland. I used to hunt (a little) with my father-in-law on his property close by, but it's been years. I'm not a big hunter but my son is in from school, and he has the bug to get a goose.

Gotta learn how to do this again. Any tips? I think my wife sold all my father-in-laws decoys and goose calls after he passed away. The last couple of years his way of hunting was to sit in his kitchen and drink coffee while looking down the river. If he saw goose getting off the water and coming toward the house, he'd walk to the closet, get his 10-gauge, and step out the back door. If he shot, you can be sure he'd get one (or more).

Off our property this morning (bad quality, sorry).
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1576782430.jpg

Very nice looking place there Rob, does the water open onto larger waters?

But wait you have a boat load of ducks right there waiting to join you for dinner.
Good luck on your goose hunt.

Cheers Richard

Thanks, Richard. Yes, this is a tributary that leads to the Chesapeake (eventually). My wife and I are really happy here, although we haven't yet spent a full winter here. It's pretty exposed sitting right on a decent sized river, so there's a pretty good wind quite a bit of the time :eek:

Nice place. The Chesapeake Bay is a terrific area.

Looks appealing. if that inlet is out of the wind it will draw birds. Decoys, some calling and cover for you and your son are all you need. If both sides of the inlet shown are yours even better. If not then you will need to shoot toward the open water to the left and get them on approach. if ti is going to ice over then get a bubbler out there....open water is a magnet.

Great place.

My son is the Goose hunter and is quite good at it. Our farm is on the Potomac and he runs those we let on to Goose hunt.

PM your email and I'll hook you folks up...he is finishing his last year of law school and is interning this week at the firm he'll join when he graduates.

I have friends who are very serious goose hunters, but it is different out here in the west.

So I really do not have anything to contribute except Beat Army! What a good game this year :)

Get a basic steak out blind, just something to break up your movement and sit near where they hang out or fly regularly. #2 steel shot, 3.5" with a modified choke will do the trick. You'll need a dog that retrieves or a vessel to get the birds. Once they got blasted a couple times they will have learned a lesson and you will need to get more creative.

G

Save the fat that melts off when you cook them. A friend of mine who owned a respected gourmet restaurant said that’s the best cooking grease in the world.

Geese are great. You don't need a lot of decoys to start , half a dozen. A goose call helps , geese are much easier to call in than ducks. Once they start for your spread don't call and stay still. I use 3inch BB.
If you roast one cut off the fat ass, and put a cookie rack under the goose to keep it out of the fat.
Good luck and keep us posted.
Steve

I think you guys are confusing domestic geese with wild geese in terms of rendering fat. Wild geese do not have much fat at all and they are not lending themselves well to roasting. The breast will either be dry and the legs done, or the breast will be good and the legs tough. So most people part them out and the breast is cooked like steak while the legs are going into a stew etc.

G

Yeah, wild geese are pretty lean

Friend of mine deep fried a goose I gave him like you would a turkey. Said it was fantastic.

Our property extends further around to the left and faces down a good sized river. We are actually on a point that is the confluence of that river and two smaller creeks (the one in the picture here is one of those creeks). We've had LOTS of geese rafting up in the hundreds most of the last month or more. There is a farm on the far shore of that picture, and they like to move back and forth between the farm and the river. There's so many places for them around here it's hard to predict where they'll be coming from, but just the other day three or four flew low enough over my house that even I could of hit them. Here's a another pic looking straight off our property down the river.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1576793027.jpg

Just got back from getting my license, picking up a goose call, and scavenging what's left in my father-in-law's stash. He had some camo burlap we can wrap around us, and he still had some goose silhouette decoys. All the shotguns I have now were his, too. He apparently sold or traded his 10-gauges at some point, so I have several of his 12-gauges. Only one takes 3 inch magnums. All the rest are 2 3/4. Got a bunch of #2 shot. Maybe not ideal, but we'll see what happens and adjust later.

The last time I think we just breasted the goose. We'd marinate it in something STRONG (e.g., lots of soy, Worcester, garlic/ginger) and maybe slow cook it over a fire. Made a decent Christmas appetizer.

All good info, thanks. Supposed to be in the 20's tomorrow morning :D

I'll send you my info now. We are in Talbot County on the Eastern Shore. Thanks very much!

Well played, sir :) Navy deserved it this year!

Wild Canada geese in Canada have plenty of fat, most in the tail.

We always cooked them in the crockpot with a couple of cans of cream of mushroom soup. Kept them from drying out.

Steel #2's are way on the small size for geese, I would say bordering on inadequate. I would consider BB minimum, with BBB or T being ideal for big Canadas. They are surprisingly tough to kill.

Any 3" 12 gauge "goose" load will be plenty. Some guys insist on the 3 1/2" but, interestingly, that long shot column doesn't seem to pattern well, especially with steel shot. There really isn't much of an advantage to using the longer shell.

Start out with an Improved Cylinder choke if you can. Tight chokes ruin steel shot patterns. Improved Cylinder will actually give Full choke patterns with steel shot.

Boy, this brings back memories. I spent much of the late '70's, '80's, and into the early '90's freezing my ever loving ass off in duck and goose blinds. Spent big money to professionally train my dogs, big money to join private hunt clubs so I didn't have to deal with the masses on public lands, all of that. Started losing interest in my mid '30's, for whatever reason. Probably just sitting in the damp cold all day. That, and I guess the switch to steel shot so dramatically reduced effectiveness that we started losing a lot of well hit birds. Probably about half of them. It was pretty maddening at the time.

I understand many of the modern alternatives to steel are almost as effective as lead. I would strongly consider looking into them. Expensive, yes, but you don't shoot many of them. It would be worth it to not lose quite as many birds.

Oh, ok, so I was a little worried about #2 instead of BB's. The clown at the outdoors store didn't give me much good feedback when I quizzed him on this the other day. (He really annoyed me today, but that's another story). He told me I'd be ok, but that he generally goes #2 BB. Maybe after tomorrow's attempt we'll go back to the store for the BB.

I don't much about chokes except what they generally do. I guess I need to look into those more.

Thanks, Jeff.

After October ends, we use BB for all waterfowl.
There are some really good after market choke tubes out there now too.

Yeah, steel shot on Canada Goose may not do the job. They are TOUGH

It has been a rough three years for Navy fans Rob. My Grandfather graduated from the Academy in '43 then did 27 years, my dad did ROTC and 22 years. I was the black sheep and did not follow their footsteps. We always drove up to Philly in the mid to late 80's early 90's to go to the game. Was brutal then too....

Ok, back to the regular scheduled topic.

My buddy uses a 12 gauge, he sold his 10.

Back in the 1960s before I went into the Navy I went duck/Goose hunting every year. Back then we went to the Prime Hook Game Preserve over in Delaware and also laid out in corn fields after they had been harvested. Used to use goose calls and lay under a home made type of camo with my trusty 10 GA magnum single shot. My hunting buddy could call geese down from 300 or 400 feet. Have to do a head shot as the feathers are so tough shot bounces right off most times.