Geese, a hunting alternative to ducks
Anyone driving across the Grand Prairie may have noticed the “grand passage” of thousands of blue, snow, Ross’ and specklebelly geese filling fields along the highway as they make their annual journey through the famous Delta flyway.
With duck numbers ever dwindling and predictions looking dismal for the future, some waterfowl hunters have taken a different tack, turning their attention from duck hunting to goose hunting.
While duck hunting requires flooded fields or flooded timber to land ducks during a season when rains have proved scarce, the goose hunter, more often than not, lures his quarry into dry fields where they regularly land to eat rice, corn or soybeans left on the ground from harvesting annual crops.
Accordingly, geese are a perfect alternative for the avid hunter looking to bag a few birds. Due to its keen eyesight and wily ways, the specklebelly goose (Ansar albifrons) has become the bird of choice for sport hunters to harvest.
“Specs” as they are commonly called, are considered, “the ribeye of the sky” due to its large breast filets and flavorful meat. Most hunters agree that it is the tastiest of all waterfowl species.
Over the past several seasons, certain waterfowlers saw the sea-change in duck numbers and began to make the transition. One of those foresighted individuals in Jefferson County is Greg Jacobs.
Jacobs is a long-time farmer who owns J&T Planting and along with his business partner, David Anderson, operates Old English Hunting Club.
“I think I shot my first spec around 2002,” Jacobs said. “A buddy and I were sneaking up on some ducks. When we popped up over the levee I picked out and shot a specklebelly. My buddy asked me why I didn’t aim at a mallard. I told him because I’d never shot one of these before. We didn’t see many specs back then.”
Jacobs went on to say how the sport had really begun de
veloping in this region about 15 years ago and only gained popularity in the past 10.
Referring to his guiding team, he explained their change to hunting geese.
“We began to see the handwriting on the wall with decreasing duck numbers and goose numbers on the rise. Around six years ago we started switching from strictly duck hunting to goose guiding as well,” Jacobs said.
He expressed how they were pretty green to start with, but the successful daily hunts they carry clients on now prove the team has come a long way.
“We’re pushing 1,500 specs harvested this season. With three weeks left in the hunt, we could go as high as 2,000 for the year,” Jacobs said.
One of Jacobs’ top-guides is Jay Perry.
“Specs are the new mallard,” Perry said.
Each hunter is allowed to take three specklebelly geese per day.
“Good fields, good callers and good scouting make all the difference,” Jacobs said.
Large land acreage is a vital component in finding where to hunt every day as well.
“J&T Planting farms 3,600 acres and with what we lease in addition for hunting, we have a total of 7,000 acres to draw on. Our fields range from Sherrill to Humphrey. We rotate on a daily basis as to who drives around looking for where the birds are using,” he said.
Jacobs went on to explain the habitat.
“Basically in the flooded rice fields we hunt, large flocks of geese can pretty much eat them out in about three days. But they keep coming back to the standing water for day roost and night roost. This keeps them in the area,” he said, adding that the surrounding water helps protect them from predators.
Birds then move from dry field to dry field looking from fresh food sources that give hunters the opportunity to call and decoy them into shooting range. Various hunting techniques range from large spreads of 300 to 600 silhouette goose figures to spreads of white and speckled-colored wind socks to smaller sets of fullbody blocks with combinations of everything in between.
Accordingly, goose hunting requires a bit more effort before sunrise in setting out decoys than the average duck hunt does.
Of the 50,000 out-ofstate hunters who come to Arkansas in pursuit of waterfowl each season, many of them have converted to goose hunting.
Jerod Petry, a dentist, is from Lafayette, La.
“I grew up hunting ducks in south Louisiana where we had lots of birds,” Petry said. “But every year it seemed like we had fewer and fewer ducks. My buddies in Arkansas told me how many specs they had up here. The first time I came up I saw 10,000 specs on one hunt. Ever since I’ve been coming back bringing other south Louisiana friends five or six times a year for the past six years.”
An experienced “goose-man,” Petry explained the technique.
“Knowing when to call and what to call is the trick. There are the two- and three-note yodel, the murmur, which is what they do on the ground, and the cluck,” he said with a grin, “is the ‘kill’ call.”
Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s new Waterfowl Coordinator Brett Leach explained the increase in goose hunting.
“White fronted (specklebelly) geese once primarily wintered in Texas and Louisiana, but now Arkansas has become a more common wintering ground for them,” Leach said. “Arkansas makes up 30% of the white front harvest, second only to Canada. This leads to greater harvest opportunities for hunters.”
The age of specklebelly geese can be somewhat determined by the markings on their chests. Young birds have solid light colored chests while with each passing year birds start to display “bars” that are the typical “speckles” on their bellies. The bars increase with age until some older birds have completely dark chests.
“Specs are quite mobile birds. We see some collard birds (specs mounted with telemetric tracking devices) go straight from Canada to Arkansas. In some cases, they may fly to Louisiana for just a couple of days then go all the way back to Illinois non-stop,” Leach said.