Home Forums Birds & Dogs Waterfowl goose decoys

im planning on going goose hunting for the first time this fall.
how many goose decoys do you have ,and what do you use?
I hear of people just using rags laid out,with great success.

fluffy, I have a dozen Canada silouettes I bought from Cabelas about 15 yrs. ago. Seem to be quality products; have been to Manitoba twice and rare use in small fields in Wisconsin. 12 decoys is not much, unless in small fields. Many serious goose hunters us 100's of decoys. To the best of my knowledge rags are mainly used in very large spreads in very large fields to provide a visual, mainly during migration patterns. If interested, I'd give you a good price on the decoys I have, but wouldn't
want you to think they'd be anything more than an addition to whatever else you have. They do work in 10-20 acre fields early and during migration, but wouldn't bet the bank on 12 decoys.

Early season you can getaway with less and 'lower quality' deeks but as the season goes on we bring out more full bodies and use shells and sills for filling gaps. Depending what the birds are doing if they are landing in big groups put out more if they are in family groups use less. We will put out as few as a dozen and as many as 10 doz. We really like Greenhead Gear fully flocked, but also have some Final Approach, Avian X and Big Foots

I run 3 dozen, ghg, elite series ffd's, 1 dozen, unknown brand full bodies, 7 bigfoots, and if needed, 5 dozen shells.

More decoys bring in larger flocks. Smaller groups, mean fewer eyes to pick out something wrong with your set up.
I also don't like hundreds of geese coming in at once. Why educate so many. I like smaller groups.
Loaded, ready to go.

Up here by the end of 5 months of shooting our geese have seen pretty much everything. There is "saftey" in numbers and even the small flocks, pairs and singles will look for the big spreads. As I said we don't show all our cards early in the season and ramp it up to full throttle by late Feb. early March when small spreads with "lesser quality" deeks simply get a passing look from most birds we seem to do pretty well with each shooter usually scoring a 10 bird limit (as long as the birds are in the air lol)

I'm a staffer for DOA decoys

20 plus years of experience goose hunting tells me that the number of decoys needed















Depends..... honestly As side from early September seasons I don't think you can go wrong with big spreads. 10-20 dozen deres. And sometimes even in Sept it will work, just remember during the Sept season and to a certain extent into the early regular season birds are still in smaller family groups anywhere from 6-14 or so birds so keep that in mind when you set your spread during those times that. While a field may have a lot of geese using them it's not gonna look realistic to have 100 decoys bunched up. Spread then fakes out in smaller groups and arrange them so you have a good killing funnel

Words to live by!!

Now that I have time I'll expand more

As the season gets colder and migratory show up. Start to bunch birds closet but leave 5-10 feet between decoys, use sleeper shells at the front of your spread around your decoys. When real birds land on frozen fields they often lay down and snooze allowing their body eat to thaw the surface a bit to make picking waste grain a bit easier,

Also don't be afraid to think outside the box with your blind placement. Obviously you want these wind at your back, but don't be afraid to try setting up with your blind cross wind to the here decoys with the her hehe head of your decoy spread 30-40 yards upwind of you. You'll be surprised at the number of late season. Wary birds who will drop in that far behind your spread.....right into gun range



Calling: the best advice I can give you in this area is don't get fancy, learn the basics and get a good instructional cd---Scott Threinan's bad Grammer is excellent,

90% of my calling consists of cluck and spit notes, with occasional deep lonesome honks as attention getters.

If you only learn one call make it the murmer. That is a territorial "stay the fugging out of my salad bowl" call that drives incoming geese nuts, buy and flag and no use it

We don't hunt the big flocks, our area is outside of the major flyways and we don't see the hundred plus flocks flying ver too often.
That being said, we usually shut off our waterfowl hunting by October, .
A big spread for us would be 4 dozen dekes with a small group of snows and specs on the margin of the flock.
Works super for us.
Cat

That's dead on

About all we use locally is 3-4 dozen. Unless we are hunting peak migration, or hunting up around the finger lakes then it isn't uncommon to use 10-20 dozen

I've had 10,000 birds come into a field with 3 doz dekes on it, and nearly no birds come, to one with 700+ dekes on it. If you are on the field they WANT to be on, smaller numbers will be fine. If you are working traffic, bigger numbers may help get some to come and look at you. There are times when they will all zero in on one field, and times when they switch fields just because they have bird brains. There are days when you have birds setting up perfectly string after string, and days when all they will do is fly by,circle and look. If you want to kill those birds that are circling and looking, you need to know when to take them, if you keep waiting, they will leave on you.

The guys I used to hunt with there were two things you had to bring to the party, a dozen dekes and a desire to hunt. One day we got on a guys estate (best way to describe this) four of us with one or two dozen and then the landowner let us use his two dozen. Counting back probably had around 100 that day, assorted shells, floaters and bigfoots.

Four floaters in a pond, some setting next to the pond and the rest used in a widely space line as though feeding down to the pond. Best setup we ever had, birds wanted to land there anyway and the dekes really were confidence builders.

That day worked so well that as we were pulling up to go we still had geese landing with us wandering around us tossing dekes around.

well,I don't have a single goose decoy.
friend of mine has dozens of diver and puddle duck decoys.
I have permission to hunt on a friends property that has a lot of pass shooting opportunities, as they were flying past pretty often last year in my bow stand.
would we be better off in the corn field,or the pond?

With no decoys pass shooting or jump shooting is your best bet

And if your looking for dekes, pm me and I'll set you up with THE best on the market