Missing Link Part #4 – Decoys in the Air!?!?

So far we have covered the fact that to have predictable and consistent success like the big boys, you need to be prepared and thinking of the big picture as well as you need to use the same good, solid, ultra lifelike ground decoys as the big boys do. Such snow goose decoys were covered in Part 3 of this article series.

But what about the air? We shouldn’t forget that should we?

In the past five years the market has produced some really cool flying duck and goose decoys. When studying or observing my personal success and the success of other powerhouse snow goose hunters, it has become obvious that flying snow goose decoys play a huge role in stacking up triple digit hunts.

The use of flying snow goose decoys can be a little controversial because some hunters think its cheating or non-traditional to use anything that flaps, spins, rotates, or anything with a motor. As far as I’m concerned snow goose hunting is an ever changing sport and if you get stuck in tradition, you’ll be a bird watcher instead of a lean mean killing machine. The choice is yours.

So what are your options? Let’s start with the old school designs of flying snow goose decoys.

Besides the North wind hoverer, which isn’t really a flying decoy, Jack-Kites and Magnets were two of the very earliest flying snow goose decoys that are still producing decent results today.

The Jack Kite decoy can be a very deadly addition to a snow goose spread but because the decoy is paper thin, fragile, and time consuming to tune, it’s not very popular and you wont find this flying snow goose decoy used very often by big outfits. However, I won’t leave home without them. The best way I have found to use them is to tie them onto a 7 ft. loop ended ¼” cold rolled steel rod with a piece of 8-10# monofilament. Make sure you use a good swivel or two so the line doesn’t twist up. You’ll have to hand tune each decoy every time you use it but the erratic motion this decoy gives off will make some snow geese lose their mind and start dish ragging into your booby trap.

Magnet decoys are still manufactured and distributed by Expedite. They too are a good decoy with good print, a sturdy head and full windsock style body. You can put these decoys just about anywhere in your spread and control the flight patterns of decoying snow geese.

One downside to these flying snow goose decoys is that the wing spar pieces are very fragile and hard to repair. The other downfall this decoy exhibits is the conduit pole it sits on. Conduit is bulky, heavy, bends easy and it sticks out like a sore thumb from a long distance away. Birds pick up on this and flare well out of gun range and if you use this decoy, it should be the first thing you change when your spread isn’t working. If you don’t have any as part of your spread right now, it’s okay because there are better alternatives out there.

Another good invention was the Real Wings decoy. I’ve never used them personally because in the beginning I heard some bad reviews but since their introduction to the market I have heard equally as many good reviews. The biggest problem I have heard about with this decoy is that it takes the perfect wind to make them work. If you don’t have a minimum of 8 mph or if you have a variable wind, the decoys tend to crash and break.

At $32.00 each it can get expensive but when you do get a handful of this flying snow goose decoy in the air, I’ve been told you can almost stand underneath them and shoot your limit. Now I’m the kind of guy that wants to have every toy at my disposal for when birds get tough.But you decide.

Recently in the past year or so, a new flying snow goose decoy has been prototyped and brought to market. It’s called the Feather Flyer. This decoy has a full body appearance, sits on a rod attached to a nose piece, and it waffles! Pretty cool eh? The purpose of this decoy is similar to the Jack Kite in that it is designed to flip and make decoying birds lose their mind. You need a moderate wind to make it flip. Anything too soft will make it sit still and a wind that is too strong will make it stand on edge. This decoy fits well on a rotary machine too.

Last but not least, is my absolute favorite flying snow goose decoy and it’s no mystery why we sell so many of them. The Sillosock Flapping decoy is a must when it comes to great hunting. I would sell or trade every other flyer in order to increase my number of Sillosock flappers. They won’t steer you wrong.

So what’s so cool about this decoy? Well for starters, they aren’t very expensive. You can get a snow for $24.95 and a Blue for $34.95. They last a long time because they are made of good quality ty-vek (which has UV reflective qualities) and coryl-plast materials. The nose piece is designed to fit onto a 3.5 ft ¼” rod which comes with the decoy but I prefer to use ¼” cold rolled steel because it moves better in the wind, it’s durable, paintable, and you can cut the lengths as high as you wish.

This flying snow goose decoy also has the widest workable “wind range” of any decoy. They work well up to about a 25 mph wind and they work well in a 3 mph wind. They even look good when there is not wind. The pole, with the right paint, is virtually invisible unlike conduit and it is very easy to stick into dry or semi frozen ground.

Sillosocks flying snow goose decoys really bring a spread alive. I’ve personally added up to 45 of these decoys to my spread at one time. Some are on rotary machines and the rest go on 4-7ft. poles. In this day and age of snow goose hunting, you need to have this decoy as part of your spread. Period!

Click Here For A Bigger Pic!

Here’s an example of why. This past spring I was down in Mound City with a friend of mine named John. We found a field down in the bottoms that was full of geese and after obtaining the required permission, we watched the birds for the rest of the evening. As the evening went on and drew to an end, 95% of the birds had moved across the road to the north. We were a little concerned about this but after 4 days of chasing permission to hunt, we were going to hunt our field anyhow.

In the morning, the two of us, placed our spread of 650 Sillosocks, 4 Rotary Machines topped with Sillosock flying snow goose decoys, 12 S.S. flappers on 4-7 ft poles and our e-caller with the Sweet Talk’n Snows sound track playing.

As just before sun started to rise, 4 trucks rolled into the field to the north of us with an outfitter. My buddy John and I were a little concerned because they were close enough to us as where their gun shots could screw up our hunting and vice versa. The night before they had placed a spread of about 900-1200(hard to tell) good quality Deadly Decoys. But they had absolutely no flying snow goose decoys.

When the birds started to fly, we started up our rotary machines, the wind kicked up to about 5 mph, our Sillosock flying snow goose decoys danced and the killing started. That morning we killed 53 despite our marginal placement of the flyer decoys and rotary machines. In the evening we shot another 24. Meanwhile our neighbors, with 7 hunters, never pulled the trigger. To our surprise, they were there again the next morning. Again without flyers and they never pulled the trigger again..=0….and we shot another 23 birds.

Do you think Rotary Machines and Sillosock Flyers are a deadly combination? You bet they are!! If you want more info on Flyer placement, snoop through the blog and you’ll find another 3 part article series on just that.

For consistent successful snow goose hunting, along with your kick butt high quality ground decoys, you absolutely must have some sort of flying snow goose decoy! Why not the best?

Good Hunting,

Mike C

P.S. The biggest plus to having 15, 25, even 35 Flyers in your spread is that they act as magnets and attract geese to, at minimum, come over and check out your decoys. Without some sort of “In Air” motion you’ll only attract the geese that fed there the night before. Flagging works well for getting a snow goose’s attention. That is no secret. But using a flag and pole is not as an effective or consistent replica of landing geese. If you watch a group of  feeding geese, you’ll see that they very seldom dont have anything in the air. Flyers are a great and easy way to have tireless flaggers in your spread.

P.P.S. Looking for something new to give you that extra edge on this fall season? Be sure you have picked up the latest and greatest E-Caller CD. Check It Out Now! http://www.huntingsnows.com/sts/hsc.htm

IF you can’t click on the above link, copy and paste it into your browser.

Link: http://www.huntingsnows.com/sts/hsc.htm

Welcome back!

To recap, what is it that successful snow goose hunting parties do that unsuccessful hunters don’t? It’s complicated. =) Actually it’s not that complicated to learn, deploy or use etc. But because the answer is very diverse in nature it is somewhat complicated to explain. Meaning, it isn’t just one magic link that makes up the difference and it’s going to take a series of articles to share what I’ve witnessed with you.

To simplify things, I’ve broken my snow goose hunting operation down to five basic components. In my opinion, these five make up the big picture

1. Equipment

2. Pre-Season Preparation.

3. Scouting and Location

4. Deployment

5. Network Development

One component leads to the other. For example, when it comes to decoying snows, equipment comes first. You can’t possibly decoy a snow goose without some sort of decoy. It used to be that a snow goose hunter could shoot a limit over diapers, paper plates, white cloths, or plastic kitchen bags. Not anymore however! The bar has been raised by an increase of hunters and longer seasons. There’s no better way to educate an animal than to threaten its life.

The number of equipment choices is virtually endless and with the popularity of snow goose hunting on the rise, you’ll have more and more options in the near future. We’ll take a look inside the “Successful Snow Goose Hunter’s” trailer in the next few articles. I want to touch on most everything and the list is long.

Once you have purchased a pile of decoys and some of the other equipment available you’ll benefit largely if you maintain it in the off season. There’s always something to do, something to fix, something to tweak or make better, something to throw away, something to replace, or something new to buy/try. Whatever it may be, do it before you head out on your hunt! Your success depends on it.

The next component of good snow goose hunting is scouting and location. Obviously you’re looking for a field with lots of feeding geese but there’s more to it than just that. Your ideal situation is to find an area not just a ton of geese, but an area with tons of relaxed geese roosting on multiple locations around the field they are feeding on. You want an area with multiple flyways. You’ll find tremendous hunts in this situation.

After you’ve found a great location you start to get into the deployment category. Deployment basically encompasses your operation. It covers everything from the alarm clock sounding off to setting the decoys, pulling the decoys, more scouting, cleaning birds, meals, and resetting the clock before going to bed.

You’ll need to make a solid plan each day and tweak it to get maximum efficiency out of your day. It’s not hard to do but for whatever reason, so many novice hunters screw it up. You’ll want to have plenty of time in the morning or afternoon to get set up before the birds show up. Snow goose hunting is not a sport where you screw around, dilly dally, waste time etc. Every minute that you waste is a minute you could watch geese dive into the decoys or catching up on some sleep.

Last but not least, it helps to develop a network of friends and farmers. Getting to know other hunters and land owners will prove to be invaluable. Farmers have land and can tell you what’s happening locally. Most of them enjoy your company whether it’s a phone call or sitting down in person for a cup of coffee. Having friends that actively hunt snow geese is also very helpful. They can tell you how the birds are working, where they have been hunting, what’s good, what’s bad etc.

In distinguishing the better than average snow goose hunters from the rest of the pack, I’ve noticed they all have their certain tricks they like to do as well as things they refuse to do (ever). They also have an open mind to new stuff they might try in the future. They all use a lot of the same tactics each and everyday however, everyone has something different to bring to the table. Something they can share with the next guy. But in the end, when the day is over, the successful snow goose hunter really gets the big picture.

They really know, inside and out, what they have to do to consistently kill snow geese. They understand what it takes and they are prepared, willing, and able to get the job done each and every day.

Until next time, enjoy your summer.

Yours In Decoying,….Mike C

P.S. Fathers day is right around the corner! If you’re looking for the perfect gift, I was able to sweet talk Chris Holste of Performance calls into selling a limited amount of some of his favorite Snow, Duck, and Honker calls at a huge savings. Almost 50% off!!

For The Duck and Canada Goose Fathers Day Special, Click Here : http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?Clk=3065367

For the “Always on Sale” Snow Goose Call click on this link and then choose Snow Goose Call from the left hand menu: http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=812237

P.P.S Next week we’ll start taking a look at equipment. Stuff that you absolutely need, stuff you need but could do without if you have to, and stuff you should throw away or burn!  

Yep! That headline is quite a mouthful but it’s a thought or question that has weighed heavy in my mind for a few years now. Why is it that a guy who’s been snow goose hunting for 25 years continues to struggle?  Meanwhile, on the other edge of the spectrum, there are many others that are enormously successful?  

Being in the position that I’m in with the HuntingSnows.com business, I have been very fortunate to meet a wide array of people over the last 6 years that have directly and indirectly helped me put a finger on this missing link. Over the course of the summer, I’ll be writing a series of articles designed to not only entertain you, but to help you discover what you’re missing link is.

I refer to the missing link as “Your Missing Link” because honestly I think its something different for everyone depending on your level of hunting experience, the time you spend in the field, your equipment, your own personal theories, and your commitment to snow goose hunting in general. With that said, it makes sense that each individual hunter or group of hunters has their own missing link or links!

To get started and to give you a short prelude into what drives me, I’ll use this first article to hopefully bring you into my mind and the way I think.

In my travels and through many friendships, I’ve had the great pleasure of hunting with, and meeting hundreds of hunters. Some are just beginning to snow goose hunt while others have been at it for quite some time. Some have been at it three times as many years as I have. Of course the common thought would be that the snow goose hunters with more hours in the field would naturally bag more geese right? It makes sense that the more you hunt these white devils, the better you’ll get at it right?

And you’d think that, if you persevere past the bad days, and the bad years paying attention to what happens each day, you should get better results right?

Unfortunately, for some odd reason, I’ve found that it doesn’t really work that way. Actually, It’s quite the opposite for a majority of snow goose hunting sportsman. This occurrence is nothing new however. In fact, each and every year, many good hunters often get so frustrated they resort to selling their equipment and altogether quit snow goose hunting due to a majority of unsuccessful hunts.  

But why?

|Again, why do people that have been snow goose hunting for 10-25 years continues to struggle?  Meanwhile, others that have hunted less time are cleaning house?

What is the missing link that allows a random new group of the hunters to fill up their bags with numbers that seem unrealistic or unbelievable? What are these newbie’s doing that the other guys don’t do?? Is it beginners luck or does it run deeper than that?

Over the last 6 years, since the conception of www.huntingsnows.com , I’ve pondered the nature of this weird and somewhat special occurrence thinking that if I can watch what other people do, I can figure it out. I can bridge this gap. And once I have a grip on it, I can share it with other snow goose hunting decoyers and help them have better success.

Regretfully, I pursued this mystery somewhat slowly because I looked at the puzzle differently than I do now. I was only comparing experienced hunters to other experienced hunters searching for the differences in an effort to find the answers.

Actually it wasn’t until about a year ago, when I was introduced to Steve, a 100% snow goose hunting newbie, that the light bulb clicked on. Since then, I’ve taken a very hard look at what separates all successful and unsuccessful hunters, new and experienced, from the rest of pack.

Digressing a moment, In my last article, I wrote about equipment preparedness. I feel it’s very important to be 100% prepared before hitting the road to snow goose hunt for many reasons. In my opinion, the most important results of preparedness is so that you can have the proper mindset to develop your hunting skills. If your hunt is cluttered with all sorts of bad decoy, or equipment problems, you can’t possibly have the mindset you need to advance your hunting skills. FYI, you can find that article on the blog at: http://www.huntingsnows.com/blog/?p=43

Getting back on track, what is this missing link? Is it decoys? Sounds? Concealment? Location? Scouting?

What is it that that successful snow goose hunting parties do that unsuccessful hunters don’t? It’s complicated. =) Actually it’s not that complicated to learn, deploy or use etc. But because the answer is very diverse in nature it is somewhat complicated to explain. Meaning, it isn’t just one magic link that makes up the difference and it’s going to take a series of articles to share what I’ve witnessed with you.

In the next article called The Missing Link Part 2 we’ll take a quick look at the “Big Picture” of snow goose hunting and from there we’ll branch out to the individual importance of everything you should be doing to increase your success.

Until next time, I hope you’re enjoying your summer.

Yours in Decoying,

Mike C

As I finish washing the 2009 spring mud off the Snow Goose Trailer I’m start thinking about how this past spring was one to remember and I’m also reminded how having a good quality rig can make or break a Snow Goose Hunt.

The 2009 Spring Snow Goose Season was absolutely fantastic. Sure some people probably didn’t do very well which is common. In fact, That’s Snow Geese! They can make a fool out of anyone but for the most part, the migration through the United States left most Decoying Snow Goose Hunters grinning from ear to ear.

It most certainly left me and my hunting partners with full freezers and a lot of good lessons and memories. We were fortunate to have good success but it did come at a price and I would be lying to you if I said we didn’t have any bad days.

We did have some struggles this year. The reality is, this sport is unpredictable. I wont go into the specifics of our problems but I will say that the nature of our problems were out of our control. Because of that I do want to touch on something that I think a lot of hunters over look. Preparedness!

I’m going to digress here to set the stage and hopefully help you to capture my mindset of preparedness.

In my last email, I talked a little about how I was getting a little bored and I wasn’t sure if there was much more to learn about snow geese. After months of part time work on our decoy rig over the winter, I felt I finally had everything perfect and that outside of the fundamentals like scouting, location, concealment, etc. I felt that everything else was up to the birds. Although this is a good place to be, I was left wondering what I would learn this time.

Before we pulled out of the drive way, I made a conscious decision to pay very close attention each day, each hunt, and learn something new no matter what. Given what I already have learned from past experiences and from other great hunters, if I wanted to develop into a better snow goose hunter, I knew I had to make a specific effort this year to gain that additional knowledge. Meaning the additional knowledge wouldn’t come easy this year.

I also knew that to gain the additional knowledge I was seeking; I had to have everything 100% ready inside that trailer. I also had to have a remedy for every problem I could foresee so that once we are on the road running on 3-4 hours of sleep, we wouldn’t get side tracked by small problems.

For example, I have extra speed controls for our 5 rotary units. I have plenty of extra poles too so that if we lose one in the dark, no problem! Extra fuses in the blind bags and inside the control boxes also became a huge asset in Missouri. Had we not had them extra parts, we would have lost powerful tools and then had to waste time scrambling to get them running again. Simple stuff like that will make a big difference but having an extra unit or two is often overlooked.

I have been at this sport for a long time now and each year, I make strides to get better at snow goose hunting. I make little changes or tweaks to the decoys, tools, and toys. I’m always looking for something better.

Because we took the time to have everything “over ready,” nothing within our control slowed us down which left us more time for important things like scouting and sleeping or more time to take care of the problems that were out of our control like flat tires, broken windshields and ultra muddy fields.

The weird thing was that the impact of our pre-hunt actions really didn’t hit me until we were on our way home this year after one of our hunts. You see I was simply going through motions that I had learned a long time ago.

As a young boy scout, I was always taught to be prepared in everything we did. It was constantly drilled into us kids until it became our mindset. It actually became an involuntary habit (like breathing) that now touches every part of my life.

On our way home after a 6 hour windshield delay and my friend John said, “Mike! That snow goose hunt couldn’t have gone any smoother.” And then when it hit me.  I realized that among other things, most importantly, we were prepared and because of it, we had achieved flawless execution when it came time to hunt.

The reason preparation is important is that although many things can happen, while snow goose hunting, that are out of our control, if you have prepared yourself for the things you can control, you’ll be able to overcome surprises or misfortune faster and easier.

If you want to optimize your success in snow goose hunting, you have to take steps at home towards preparedness and flawless execution which are two important components of a successful snow goose hunt.

Yours in Decoying,

Mike C