Early goose season is one of my most favorite hunting times in the year. Not only is it the first waterfowling opportunity of he year, it is also a great time to get the cobwebs out of your hunting system.
    This is not a gentleman’s hunt, however. In order to be successful during the early season you have to be willing to put in the time. There are two areas in which so many hunters make mistakes and those are with scouting and concealment.
    Scouting is all about finding the birds while concealment is about getting close enough for an opportunity at a kill. Take care of those critical details, and other details like decoying; calling and flagging are all you have to worry about. Ignore those details and all those other things won’t make much of a difference.

    Scouting is key

    Take a fully loaded boat, pack it full of fishing gear, and plop it in the middle of an Olympic pool and you won’t catch a dang thing. It seems obvious, but quality scouting is the number one element ignored by so many waterfowlers— especially early season goose hunters.
    Yes, it is the first waterfowling opportunity of the year. Yes, there are a lot of juvenile birds flying around that have never seen a hunter in their lives. These birds are highly conditioned, however, and have an established pattern of behavior. They like the fields they visit everyday and if you aren’t in that field they aren’t going to come and find you.
    I I begin scouting for this season back in July and have watched the flocks moving from their roosts on the water to their favorite fields. I’ll do this several times a week on my way here or there just to see where they are going and where the geese are coming from.
    It is important to locate the roost as well because if you hunt within half a mile, you are taking a chance. Hunters who shoot the roost completely ruin an area for the season. With an early duck season this year on top of all that, you could ruin a great spot for the rest of the year.
    Resident geese have a definite pattern and you can almost set your clock by their daily patterns. Keep a mental note or written record of where you are seeing geese and when.
    It always amazes me that geese will fly over acres and acres of field and quality habitat to get to their favorite field. Hunt the wrong field, and you’ll watch a lot of birds fly by out of range. Hunt the right field, and you’ll have an awesome experience.
    Finding that “X” on the map is not easy but the advantage of early season goose hunting over the regular season is because you are dealing with completely resident birds. The geese know the area, they know human patterns, they know the fields with the best food and they know the fields to avoid.
    Hunt a field quickly and then get out of there so you can hunt it again. A lot of hunters will go to that “X” on the map, have an awesome hunt, and then take their time basking in the glory. Meanwhile, those geese have visited other fields, been fired upon a few more times, and are heading back to their roosting pond. On the way back they’ll often stop by their favorite spot to check on it after a rough morning. If you are sitting in that field, chances are they won’t return.
    Leave the area quickly, and you have a field that is preserved for another hunt. I’ve done this with some fields throughout the entire early goose season. Those birds would be shot at in the morning, but would return later on that morning to feed for a few hours. Because I only hunted in the morning, and not everyday of the week, the available food in that hay field was enough to bring them back in the afternoon. Those geese then spent hours feeding only to return the next morning for some more hunting action.
    One of the toughest parts of scouting is not finding the field to hunt, but gaining permission to hunt that field. It takes an awkward first conversation but once most farmers realize you aren’t interested in the deer on their property they are happy to reduce the size of the goose population.
    Always be a gracious guest and clean up your mess, don’t dig holes, and respect the land. Offer the farmer a share of the kill or even the opportunity to hunt with you. I’ll also bring over some frozen walleye fillets in the middle of the summer on one of my scouting trips just to remind the farmer that I’m appreciative of the opportunity.


    Concealment

    Probably the second most important factor to a successful early season goose hunt is concealment. All that scouting won’t pay off if the birds eyeball you before ever engaging that firing pin.
    Concealment includes a good decoy spread, but it’s mostly about making you invisible from the geese up in the air. If you do not have your blind or pit completely covered, the geese will take notice. This means using an ample amount of surrounding vegetation, or artificial vegetation that matches the field you are in.
    There are a lot of quality blinds on the market but the one I’m most excited about is Beavertail’s Gunner blind. I like the spring-loaded back rest that allows me to concentrate more on lining up your shot and less on getting into position when its “go” time.  It also has a low profile, which is critical for maintaining concealment.
    If you buy a new blind be sure to give it a thorough mudding. If you have an old blind but haven’t yet given it a mudding then this applies to you as well. That shiny new blind looks good in the store but it also shows up prominently from the sky. Time to mess up your new purchase!
    I’ll take a five-gallon bucket, fill it up halfway with dirt, finish filling it with water and use a broom like a mop. Dip the broom in the bucket and scrub the blind. Give it a good coating of mud and the let it sit for the night. In the morning, once the mud has dried, knock the big chunks off and you have a fully mudded blind.
    Do not neglect doing this with your dog’s blind either. It might be small and compact, but a non-mudded dog blind will stick out like a sore thumb against an otherwise high quality decoy spread.
    Early season goose hunting is a great time to check some of the dog training you did over the summer in a real hunting scenario. Finding problems now should help with any that arise down the road.
    I like a good low-profile dog blind that retains an opening but is portable enough to match the rest of my gear. I like the Field Bully dog blind by Rig’Em Right because it has a low profile, is easy to set up and has straps perfect for concealment.
    Accurate scouting and thorough concealment are the two most important factors to a successful hunt and once you have them figured out, you can deal with more interesting things like flagging, calling and decoying.
    There are so many different ways to effectively do each one, the main advice here is go for it and experiment. If you’ve truly addressed concealment and put yourself on that “X” on the map, then you can become a better waterfowler with those other details.