Kentucky's 1st Resident Goose Season

[Ryan Tucker]

Well, they finally got it passed for us this year. We'll be having our first ever resident goose season in Kentucky. Will anyone be hunting them?

[Dan Jackson]

I think I might have to give it a shot - when's it open?

[JimHewitt]

I've been hunting the resident goose season here in Minnesota for a dozen years now. I've never been able to get used to hunting big Canadas while I'm still seeing waterskiers on the way to the lakes.

Nor am I used to having to fight heat and mosquitoes while goose hunting.

But, boy, when those big ones come in all the "strangeness" just seems to disappear!

Some people here in MN don't like the fact that someone's out hunting in early September -- claim that it messes up the duck hunting later, and that there isn't any sport in the early goose season. Basically, I think it's that they don't like to hunt in the heat and are mad that the local geese are a bit wiser on the "real" opening day in late September or early October. The same ones call early goose season "hunting sky carp."

I haven't found the early goose season any easier or harder to decoy than the geese on a "real" opening day when they haven't been shot at before.

Hope you guys have a ball down there in KY. When does that season start?

Just one piece of advice for decoying geese in the early season. If you put out a lot of decoys, it seems to work best to arrange them in family groups of 5-9 birds with a bit of space in between the groups. Most of the geese are still in family groups, and they're more apt to land where there's space for the whole group to land apart from the other groups. If you watch geese on the ground at this time of year, you'll probably notice that even when they're feeding, they'll stay in pretty tight family groups and not do much mixing, unlike later in the year when the locals are mixed with flight birds.

[ July 11, 2001: Message edited by: gadwall ]