Home Forums Birds & Dogs Waterfowl Decoying canadian geese?

Watching waterfowl videos and I see where canadian geese come into spreads of snow geese.
We have no snows here, but was wondering if we had to use all canadian decoys or could we use snows, with canadians, and still have them come in? ???

My experience has shown that the dark geese ( canada's or specs) will come into a snow spread but if they are going to land they will usally land way out to the edge of the spread and not in the kill hole.

My experience is that you can use both. but keep them seperated. The Snow's like their own, but the Canada's will use both. The problem with Snow decoys is you need a ton of them to get any decent shooting. You could supplement the Snow Decoy's with white rags on sticks intermixed among the Decoys. That way you can get the effect of a larger spread. All that being said, I have given up on Snows. I would rather decoy a dozen or so large Canada's in than wait for a couple of hundred Snow's, and only come home with a few. However, in some areas, they are the only act in town, so you can't be picky.

Yes Sir...This has been the exact same black goose SOP we've experienced for many moons only exception would be White Fronts{specks}or on occasion a small bunch of Hutches might try to sneak in with Snows.

Round here the spring migration is a different ball game as it's not unusual to see everything ducks included on the same field bumping into to each other.

Guys above me nailed it. Honkers like to stick with their own kind. If you have a small honker spread you can add some specks to beef it up but depending on where you are and what size local flocks you don't need a lot of dekes all the time. Now if you are where the honkers don't want to be or not in their daily pattern a bigger spread works better to try to pull them.

Specks come to anything and are generally stupid compared to honkers.

Better decoy quality vs. quantity for honkers.

I've found that specks are more wary than honkers. Pre-hunt scouting is the ticket to having a fun shoot - that and having a good quality spread and knowing how to set it up for the conditions, time of year, number of birds, etc. I wouldn't bother using more than one species of decoys unless the birds that are using the field are mixed. If that is the case, observe how they are interacting and set your spread similarly. You can throw a handful of snows off to the side of your spread of dark geese to increase visibility, but I've never found that to be of much benefit. Being right on the money where the birds want to land is far more important.

Where we goose hunt, the majority of the birds like the yards and small acreage on the other side of the river at the ritsy houses.
They do land and feed in fields on our side but we have noticed that where the large flocks are already the new incoming birds tend to land with them and not the smaller flocks or decoy spreads.
Snow geese dekes are cheaper, and was thinking more visible, and may pull birds away from the large flocks on the other side of the river.
They are usually flying at tree top level, so birds at least coming over could get shot just cause they veered over to check out the dekes.

Snow geese dekes are cheaper and thought maybe adding several dozen to our Canadian dekes may help.

For about $180/dz you can buy GHG oversize Canada shells. A couple dozen full body geese and 3-4 dozen of those oversize shells and you have a top notch spread. Then you just need to be in a place that they want to land, have a configuration that will provide you with killing shots, be well hidden, and be able to call. I wouldn't bother with a bunch of snow dekes unless you have a pretty good mix of snows in the area. You will be better off using flags and getting their attention.

Look at deadly decoys.. I have 2 dz of mallards.... If there is a little wind they really have good motion.... Plus they dont take up a lot of room...There a good mixer with full bodies...


And what Ranger1 said flags..

Ranger, where is the best place to get those GHG decoys for us Montanans? I think I need a couple dozen.

We have always kept our snows and Canadas separate up here.
We don't as a rule get a lot of snows or specks, but they do come in every now and then, and a few in the spread doesn't hurt.
one hundred miles over to the west, we sure do however, still keep them separate, but get lots of them into the spread.
Cat

troutslayer - I generally order from Mack's Prairie Wings or Roger's Sporting Goods. Both places have been good to me. If you keep your eyes open you can snag a free shipping deal from either place too.

I'll keep my eyes open. Thanks.

I have a spread of G and H . I have had all kinds come into Candian spread.

We run almost all Canada's. maybe adding a a half dozen to a dozen snows late in the year. But the early snows are almost always juries and routinely drop into Canada. Spreads. Hell when we duck hun the river we use Canada dekes with maybe a pair or two of mallards.

I have just under 4 dozen canadians now. If I hunt with the other guys we can put out about 8 dozen.
I think we're good.

Quality of the decoys makes all the difference in the world. Flocked heads on your shells and a good mix of full bodies will bring in more birds than a spread of non-flocked shells that all look the same. There are plenty of geese out there that are over 20 years old, they've seen too many decoy spreads to fall for stuff that doesn't look right.

I've never seen a difference in committing between Canadian and American Canada geese...no such thing as 'canadian' geese...sorry, just a smart a$$ biologist comment and pet peave of mine...

We, my Goose Club, put a lot of birds on the ground here in Maryland... I have mixed decoys twice in the last 20 years.. We rig out all Canada.. We have some of the most expensive rigs and some "home made" rigs... Sometimes it's 20 big feet or its all the above and the rig is 100 yards long and 60 yards wide... 800 decoys+++... 70% are vee boards...
Not to spam but we have a fb page " Upper Bay Gun Club " look thru there and you will see a few rigs..

Hahaha...It's one of my big pet peeves too. Drives me nuts.

Splatter, there is a guy in Rio Rancho that makes some pretty nice silo decoys. I'm thinking about picking up a dozen or so ducks and a couple of snows myself.

http://www.phantomoutdoors.com/