I was invited to join two guys on a goose hunt yesterday. One of the guys has been hunting waterfowl for 2-3 years, the other was on his first hunt, but had gotten the permission for us to hunt the field. I asked him what I thought were the basics. Where i. The field the birds had been, how many birds has he been seeing, how many decoys did he own. He gave me enough of an idea that when I drove by the field I could get a layout of the terrain and an idea of where the birds were, so I was able to pick a good spot with some cover to set up the blinds.
As for decoys, he told me he had 2 dozen shells and a dozen full body feeders- enough to hunt that field. I asked him how many birds he was seeing and he said between 200-300 birds. I told him to bring his dekes and I woukd bring mine also. This was when things started to get frustrating. When I was invited on this hunt I was told it was because this new guy wanted to hunt with someone with some experience, which is fine. Hebwas reluctant to put more decoys out than the ones he owned, but I finally convinced him to put a big spread out, by explaining to him that this was a big field in a high traffic area and we would be better off with a bigger spread to catch the sight of passing flocks.
The next setback happened when I tried to explain that we should set the spread upwind of the blinds in groups of 8-20 birds leaving a slight pocket in front of the blinds. He argued that it wouldn't work because everything he read and all the videos he saw had the spread right in front of the blinds. Which would work, had the wind been coming directly from our backs and not at an angke from over our left shoulder. I let him have his way figuring it would be a lesson for him. Birds started working but kept skirting and landing down wind just out of range.
After a while I got up and rearanged the decoys like I had originally wanted and birds started landing in our lap. By the end of the day we limited on geese and had killed a few bonus mallards. And the new hunter, well he still believes the hunting videos are gospel and we just got lucky
Safe to say, my last hunt with him
