How do you hunt geese in the early season, before the migration begins? On this episode I share three strategies for early pre-migration goose hunting and how you can find success. Special thanks to Tetra Hearing for sponsoring this episode. Get you Free 2-Year Service Plan. Just add this Service Plan to your cart when purchasing a Tetra Hearing device and use this code at checkout to get the service plan for free: NEWHUNTERSGUIDE

Hunting geese in the early season often requires different strategies depending on where you live and when things begin to move in your area. In the summer, geese may not travel much. They may stick to one area and can be harder to find and even harder to setup on. But if you adjust your strategies, you can find them and bring them home.

This may be called the resident goose season, but sometimes a term is used that denotes pest control depending on the area. In some places, even parks or golf courses will let hunters in during specified hours to clean out the geese. This is often not hunting, and while it’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s not what I am referring to in this episode. I am talking about wild wary geese in their natural habitat, not birds that will eat out of your hand at the park. Harvesting meat to help parks and golf courses is fine, needed even. But that isn’t what I’m talking about today.

Land hunting. Hunting geese on land is maybe the most straight forward in the early season, but finding the birds is the difficult part. They may travel or fly little or not at all this time of year, and they may be quieter. So, it may take some scouting and getting special permissions to be able to reach them.

Water hunting. This may be the hardest way to hunt geese in the early season because their water habits can be so different compared to the rest of the year. They may travel little or none at all and can be more difficult to setup on, even requiring stealth to setup your decoys depending on what they are doing in your area.

Jump hunting. The early season may be the best time of year to jump hunt geese because they are more stationery and fly less and there is more cover to use to your advantage. Windy days are best to conceal your motion and cover your sound. You may want to employ some unorthodox techniques like using tight chokes with TSS ammo to get head/neck shots from afar, similar to turkey hunting.

Listen to the entire podcast episode to learn how to start hunting geese in the early pre-migration season.