Pennyslvania's late goose season goes unti Feb 14th.
I haven't had much luck with goose (Canadian) hutning once the snow falls and I am looking for some advice. We have 6-10 inches of snow on the ground right now.
I have done pretty well when there is little to no snow on the ground, but I never seem to do well after we get 6 plus inches of snow. Pretty cold temperatues (20 degrees F and below) generally accompany the snow (so that may be part of problem...In my experence, I never see many geese when the temp drops below 20 degrees F). It seems that the geese spend a lot more time on the water and every so often go for a fly around, but I haven't seem them in the field that they were visiting before the snow. I haven't had time to do any scouting. Some of the farmers I called indicated that they see the geese flying around but not landing in their fields.
I realize that location is almost everything when it comes to goose hunting. Should I try to position myself in areas where they fly around or should I still try to hunt corn fields for where they were feeding before the snow? Do geese borrow through snow to eat corn?????
I'm not real interested in river hunting this time of year and most of the ponds are frozen over. Any value in shoveling away some of the snow to make the landing zone more appealing (or is this a big waste of time)? Any advice would be appreciated.
Also, I have 6+ dozen decoys. Recently (just before the snow hit), the geese have been doing low fly overs near by decoys but not landing (which was not the case a few weeks earlier). It appears that the geese have smartened up and are avoiding the larger decoy speads? Am I reading into this too much or should decoy spreads be reduced to 2 -3 dozen in the late season?
I'm hoping to hunt Friday and Saturday mornings. The temps are expected to be around 30 degrees.
Any advice appreciated! Thxs