Snow Goose Spread | Short Reed Goose Calls

Snow Goose Decoy Spread – How Many Decoys Should I Use?

Ever talk to a avid snow goose hunter and discuss the topic of decoy spreads? Chances are the hunter will have told you at some point in the conversation that you need as many decoys as humanly possible when building your decoy spread.

As it turns out this is very good advice - lets explore why. When snow geese migrate they travel great distances. As I pointed out in a previous post - snow geese travel from the artic all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Only the artic turn migrates further than the snow goose on the North America continent. To travel that great of a distance, it requires a tremendous amount of energy and food supply. To conserve energy snow geese take advantage of the jet stream currents and migrate at tremendous heights and in great numbers to take advange of drafting. An average flock of snow geese migrate at heights of 2000 - 5000 feet in the air. In addition, once a flock decends to feed - the whole flock will come down to feed. Snow geese feed for long periods of time in the same location, because it takes a lot of energy to ascend to the heights that they migrate.

Thus it makes sense to use a huge amount of decoys - so that they can see them from that height. The objective is to attract as snow geese into our spreads as possible. The larger the snow goose spread - the bigger the flocks that will land in the spread.