Calling Geese With Realism
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By: Scott Threinen 3 Time World Live Goose Calling Champion
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Have you ever gone to the local park to feed the geese and wanted to know what they where saying to each other or better yet, what it meant? Have you ever wondered how a goose can attract another goose to them from more or less wherever and whenever? I know I have, and it’s a mind boggling sight each time it happens… and it’s also frustrating to hunters that spend so much time practicing to perfect the sounds of a goose on a call for countless hours each year. I know the question of what they are saying will doubtfully ever be answered, but how they are saying it may be the ticket to success.
Every year there are more and more hunters who are becoming accomplished on a goose call. More hunters and better callers equal more pressure on geese. It also puts pressure on you in finding ways to put meat on the table. It seems like one good hunt and you’re done with the education process these days. Geese are learning how to tell the difference between hunters and real geese very fast. I know we have all tried the tricks, like saving our best decoys until later in the season, increasing or decreasing the number of decoys that we use, hunting the field edges till we have to resort to blinds and pits, or getting to the point of basically bringing a generator to the field to keep the batteries running that we have out. Whatever the case may be we have tried it. There is probably one thing that doesn’t change through all this, the way we call to the birds.
I’m sure that most of us carry more than one call on our lanyards to the field. A call that is high and low in pitch…and maybe one that is high and low in volume. Maybe even a wood and an acrylic which is great. Like the old saying goes, “you can’t build a house with just a hammer”. A couple of things to keep in mind, even if you switch calls your cadences and rhythms more than likely will stay the same. You probably have tendencies to do certain notes when the geese get to a certain point. Maybe it is your favorite “lay down stuff”…every hunter does it. Just go to a sporting goods store sometime and listen to the people that are trying out the calls. Each one they pick up, they do the same thing on. It’s the same when you’re out hunting and I believe geese pick up on this very quickly. It seems like the only thing that is keeping us different from them, with all the realism in decoys and blinds that can hide us anywhere, is the communication…in essence calling. It’s not that we don’t know how to make the sounds, it’s the rhythm. All too often we don’t use goose rhythm, we use human rhythm.
To me a goose will “talk” for two reasons; to attract one another or to warn one another, and they do it in broken rhythms. A goose, or a flock of geese, won’t just call; making a “wall of sound” like a human tends to do. They call in series of up and down sequences, more often than not two geese doing the calling. They will do their deal then calm down, and then they might pick back up again. Geese do this a lot when they are on water, and when they are RELAXED on land. This is what I have seen from geese in unprotected feeding fields and unprotected water, and again, it’s usually two geese. When there is just one goose talking in a slow cadence, he is either sending out a warning of danger from a predator, or to another bird because he has something he is protecting (FOOD).
I believe FOOD is why no call is sometimes the best call out in the field. I say this for two reasons. The first, and perhaps most important, is that it’s different from what the other hunters are doing. Reason number two, it shows realism. I’m sure you have watched flocks of geese approach a field with geese already in it and have heard the geese on the ground say nothing until the last 60 yards or so. Once the landing geese get closer, they start going crazy. Usually you will hear one start clucking by itself, real fast, before the other dominant birds join in. To me, they do this because they are trying to hide themselves, but once they realize they have been spotted, they start to warn the geese in the air that “this is our spot”, and “this is our food”. Another reason why calling less is sometimes good is that the geese are eating. I don’t know about you, but I don’t talk a lot when I’m eating, especially when I’m hungry and have little time to fill myself. If you’re hunting on the “spot”, otherwise known as the “X”, this is a good way to go about calling them. It shows a lot of realism and that’s always a good thing.
When you’re hunting in a traffic field, or a field with a lot of competition around you, it used to be that you wanted to give it everything you had, you wanted to over power the next field. Five years ago that would work. You could load up a field with some good callers and “let it eat”. Don’t get me wrong, it works sometimes, but it’s starting to work less and less each year because, like I said before, everybody is getting better on the goose call. Now it is a different story with different birds. The main reason why it is different is because “letting it eat” is not real and geese have become accustomed to hearing it, therefore they don’t find it as impressive (Traveling birds are a different story). We have to swallow our pride on some days and go back to the basic sounds, and use them in a goose rhythm.
The later in the season it gets, the later I start calling. I wait until they are much closer before I make a sound. It all depends on the field I am hunting. To me, it seems like the longer (I’m talking days) geese have been in a field, the more vocal they become. The food is sparse and there is more competition for what is left. Also, the longer they have been in a field the more comfortable they feel. As I said before, I don’t talk a lot when I am eating, that is, until my plate is empty and I have to ask for more, or in a goose’s case, fighting for more. This to me is a good way to think about calling geese when hunting on the “X”. Calling to birds when hunting a field they are in is all about feel and realism, and if you sound real, more often than not it will seal the deal.
Calling geese is a difficult subject to put into words. Remember that this article is just one person’s view on calling a goose in today’s hunting world. It is not the only way or the best way, it’s just something to think about when the going gets tough. We all hunt different and we all call different, but I think there is one thing we all have in common. We want to look, sound, and act like real geese as much as possible. What I’ve described is just another way to go about doing it and another reason to get out and be around the birds we devote so much time to in the fall.
Until next time,
Scott Threinen