Texas Goose Hunting

Dog Days of Goose Hunting
By Russell Tinsley

After more than four decades of chasing geese, my many hunts over the years have been pretty much the same. While all were fun, and some more productive than others, only a few were uniquely different.

This one made the short list.

Even so, some details are sketchy. Over time, memory blurs. It was in the late 1960s and we were hunting near Eagle Lake-just exactly when and where, I can't say-but I do know Marvin Tyler of the Blue Goose Hunting Club at Altair was our guide, it was the last day of the season and the weather was uncharacteristically springlike-mildly cold, a high sky with not a cloud in sight, almost calm, not enough breeze to move the pieces of soft white plastic we were using for decoys.

From what I had heard and experienced a couple of times, with those conditions our odds of success were not all that great. In clear weather the big birds tend to fly way up there, plenty safe from shotguns. When there is significant wind, geese fly closer to the ground, and at the same time the breeze moves the white plastic and makes the spread seem alive-geese on the ground, feeding. Late-season geese-especially snows-are spooky birds, wild from being hunted, and they are not inclined to decoy under even the best of circumstances.

Well surprise, surprise. Hunts don't always go by the "book." At precisely 8:39 a.m. our party of five limited out. I remember the time because I looked at my watch when the last snow goose hit the ground. I'd never experienced goose hunting quite like this. As the old saying goes, "The birds covered us up." A winter snow goose storm, it was. They flew low and right to us.

At the time, I sometimes took success for granted. Limits were not that rare back then. I was more impressed by how quickly we had put that many geese down, despite the "uncooperative" weather and the geese being as wild as you would expect near the tail end of the season.

One thing I had learned after more than 40 goose hunts-including one stretch of 23 straight years when I didn't miss a season-is that hunts like this are not a gift of luck. According to Clifton Tyler, they are the result of knowing the birds' routine.

Clifton is the son of Marvin, now retired. I've hunted with one or both since Clifton was a star lineman for the Columbus High School football team and was one of his dad's guides when he was available. Today, Clifton is the owner of the Clifton Tyler Goose Hunting Club in Eagle Lake. (Marvin sold the Blue Goose Hunting Club to John Fields and it is still based in Altair, not far from Eagle Lake.)

Anyway, as Clifton explains, there is one mitigating factor that can make or break a hunt, no matter the weather conditions or the time of the season. On the hunt I have been describing, we located in the right place. Marvin knew where the geese were feeding.

The next morning, before the birds left their roost, we were arranging the so-called "spread" of white out in the field, some distance from a fenceline. Geese will shy away from the fencelines because they want to use their eyesight to avoid danger. By legal shooting time we were ready for them. The geese were determined to return to the field in which they had been feeding the prior day. They came directly to the spread, within easy shotgun range.

Location, that's the key. "It is no different now than it was back then when you hunted with my dad," Clifton says. "If you find a field where the geese are feeding and you have access to that field, you can get in there early before the birds are flying, set up, and count on getting some shooting. The birds want back in their feeding grounds.

"Forget the weather and the fact that it is near season's end and the birds-especially the veteran snow and blue geese-are supposed to be wild almost to the point of being paranoid. The other hunting-setting up on a flyway and trying to decoy geese as they fly from roost to feed-is much more iffy."

Establishing location 30 or more years ago was much easier. This is because there was little interest in goose hunting before Marvin, along with a few others such as the legendary Jimmy Reel, started commercial hunting on the Eagle Lake, Lissie and Garwood prairies. As Clifton explains, few farmers back then leased their lands for hunting. Marvin knew most of the farmers. If he located feeding geese and he wanted to hunt that field, all he had to do was pick up the telephone and ask, offering to pay about 10 bucks per person for hunting privileges. Thus, he had the benefit of prime location almost every day.

Today, however, virtually every acre of huntable land from Beaumont to Bay City is leased, and a guide can't go just any place where geese are feeding. Access is the key to a successful hunt, as much as location.

Which brings up a point: If location is so important, why don't more goose guides nowadays pay attention to it?

They do, when the opportunity is there.

By gentlemen's agreement, commercial hunting operations cease at noon each day. This gives the geese time to calm and dine in peace and keeps them hanging around the neighborhood. Meanwhile, each afternoon a guide scouts for geese concentrations and plans where he will hunt the following morning.

If the geese are feeding in a field his hunting club has leased, the decision is a no-brainer. He'll have his spread out and will be waiting for the geese to return the next a.m. And if his hunters can shoot straight he'll probably bring in a bunch of geese. Other hunters will wonder why their party hadn't done as well.

Location can make this much difference. If the guide doesn't have access to the field in which the geese are feeding, he will have to make the best of circumstances, putting out a spread on land where he can hunt and trying to get the geese to decoy as they head out in early morning to get breakfast. Some days the birds are more willing to decoy than they are on others.

Geese flying by sometimes change course slightly and act as if they are inclined to approach the decoy spread, but at the last moment they will flare away, just teasing. Some hunters can't resist the temptation and will throw desperation shots their way, wasting ammunition and risking crippled birds.

This is where a guide earns his fee. He lets the geese come into range and he calls the shots. But even so, typically it will sound as if an anti-aircraft battery has opened up and few if any geese will fall. Geese are deceptively fast for their size, and the general tendency is not to lead them enough.

Geese usually decoy in small groups of five or six birds. Large flocks tend to hold together as they fly high, jabbering among themselves. They have a destination in mind and they are not much interested in the spread. The best hunters can hope for is that a goose will see the spread, get curious, break away from the large gathering and pull two or three others in with it.

Surprisingly, the birds might be more inclined to decoy toward the end of the season than they were earlier. Clifton Tyler says there are several reasons for this.

The birds are not as skittish, for one thing. The season has been under way for almost three months and most hunting pressure eased a few weeks back. There are fewer hunters in the new year. Also, the geese become more social in the winter and won't spook at the slightest hint of danger.

"I like to hunt late in the season rather than at the first because the geese have had a chance to complete their migration and there are more birds to hunt," Clifton says. "Plus, they're not as wild, since hunting pressure is not as widespread or intense."

In either case, late or early, location-again-plays the leading role. Ask the typical hunter to name the most important factor in hunting success, though, and he probably will say weather.

You've probably heard it: Fog or a stiff wind will cause the birds to fly close to the ground; with a high sky, clear and blue, the birds will fly way high, just moving specks on a blue horizon.

Geese are not that predictable, however. Take fog, as an example. Clifton says geese really don't like to fly in fog. After leaving their roost they often will find a plowed field, land in it and wait for the fog to lift.

And as I found on one hunt in late January a few years back, the white decoy spread in a fog will actually spook geese rather than attract them. When our group of hunters got settled, the ground fog wasn't that significant. But as first light came to the prairie, it got soupy. We could hear geese flying overhead, and occasionally we would get a brief glimpse of birds changing directions as they neared the decoys.

It didn't take Clifton Tyler long to understand what was happening. He said the birds were flaring off before they got within range. He suggested that Lonnie Gescheidle and I take off our white smocks, walk about a hundred yards in the direction the geese had been coming from, get down and be prepared to shoot as the unsuspecting birds came in low to give the spread the look-see, before they sensed something suspicious and flared off.

This was weird. We usually could hear a bird, two or three sometimes, before they briefly broke out of the fog-shadowy shapes right there in front of us, easy shots.

That, incidentally, was the last limit of geese I shot. Since the daily limit of light geese was raised to 10, I haven't come close. But I can blame older snow geese as much as my shooting ability. These old veterans that have survived a season or two don't make many mistakes.

But if they do make mistakes, it is just as likely they will make them late in the season, when they're not being hassled almost every day. And if the hunter can take advantage of location, a late-season shoot can be one to remember.