written by Butch Goodwin of Northern Flight Retrievers  

For years I have watched an occasional flight of snow geese - along with a large number of sandhill cranes, Canada geese, and assorted long waves of ducks - trailing back and forth over my house in western Idaho during the spring and fall migrations. I would occasionally see small groups of about a dozen snows rafted on the local impoundment reservoirs or on our state-owned Wildlife Management Areas. And, on a rare occasion, an errant snow goose would even wander past while taking a closer look at my Canada goose floaters along the Snake River. From the little that I had seen and heard over the years about snow geese, I was under the impression that they were pretty stupid and not nearly as wary as their Canada cousins. 

Folks, let me state for the record: I stand corrected! 

If you have never been witness to the spectacular show that takes place in the area around Mound City, Missouri, in the spring, and if you call yourself a hunter, you really need to add it to your "bucket list" of things you must do. And to simply call it "spectacular" may be a gross understatement. 

I have to level with you: I can't recall ever hearing of the Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge, although I am sure I had dashed right past it numerous times when heading south from Interstate-80 down 1-29 to Kansas City to pick up 1-70. This has always been my preferred route to avoid the Chicago area when heading to the east from Idaho. So when Jeff Hajjar invited me to go along and said we were heading for the Squaw Creek Refuge at Mound City, Missouri, to experience the best snow goose shooting in the country, it didn't really register. I just blindly went along to see what it was all about. 

Jeff is a long-time friend and hunting buddy who owns a business that goes by the name of SRM (Snake River Machine) in Meridian, Idaho. He designed and manufactures a stainless shotgun action system called a "Surecycle", which improves the shell cycling of most of the semi-auto shotguns currently available. His company also builds shot­gun-magazine tube extensions and "Terror" choke tubes. Over the years, I have trained two Labradors for Jeff, and we have become good friends. He has extended an offer every spring to go along on a snow goose hunting trip, but I was never able to get away. After repeated invitations, however, I was finally able to work it out. 

For this trip, I took my usual 12-gauge 'Winchester 101 over-under, but I also took along my favorite gun for Canada geese - a Browning 10-gauge pump. Before we left, Jeff handed me one of his Terror choke tubes for the lO-gauge with the words, "Try this and watch what it will do to these geese." 

Mound City is a solid two-day drive from western Idaho, and the springtime weather can change almost over the next hill as we discovered in western Wyoming. Beautiful weather was quickly overwhelmed by a whiteout snowstorm that rapidly disappeared within a very few miles - but not before a Wyoming state trooper took the opportunity to let us know that, although we weren't speeding, we were probably driving too fast for the rapidly deteriorating conditions. But, when he discovered that we were heading for snow goose hunting in Missouri, he told us to slow down, wished us a good hunting trip, and expressed an interest that if he didn't have to spend the next few days saving speeders' lives, he might like to go along. 

After the mandatory stop - and rite of passage for all sportsmen traveling east or west on 1-80 - at the Cabela's headquarter store in Sidney, Nebraska, for last-minute shells and other essentials, we were on the way through The Rainwater Basin. This is an area of roughly 42,000 square miles along the South Platte River near Kearny, Nebraska, which comprises a massive number of shallow lakes and marshes where millions of migrating birds stop to rest and feed. This is where the bird show starts. 

The numbers of birds we could see from the highway simply defied an accurate description in words. It was common to see long, irregular strings of migrating geese and ducks covering the sky and reaching almost to the horizon, and, within sight of the highway, there were acres upon acres of resting birds covering every available inch of every small pond or wetland. And this show continued almost all the way to Lincoln, Nebraska, where we stopped to pick up another friend, Mike Livingston. Mike is a genetics professor at the University of Nebraska, a hard-core waterfowler, and dedicated snow goose expert who is also a working decoy carver and can withstand wind-driven cold better than any person I have ever known. 

It's a relatively short hop south from Lincoln to Mound City on 1-29, with endless waves of birds continually moving in every direction. And it didn't take much time around the motel and at the local restaurant in Mound City to get the latest updates from other hunters and outfitters that the recent increase of geese at the Squaw Creek Refuge had happened quite rapidly. The Missouri Department of Conservation was estimating that there were in excess of a million geese on the refuge, staging for their final push north to their remote nesting grounds on the Arctic tundra of Canada's Northwest Territories. 

The first two things that struck me immediately were the high-pitched, 24-hour-a-day squealing and barking of the many thousands of snow geese moving in and out of the area, and the variety of license plates of hunters who had come from all around the nation to chase them. It was like the migration of snow geese and hunters all converging at the same time - and little Mound City, with only two motels and two restaurants, handles it amazingly well. 

Snow goose populations have more than tripled over the last 30 years, and, because of this sudden increase in numbers, they are severely damaging, if not destroying, their own fragile Arctic nesting territory and the habitat of other Arctic nesting birds. This rapid overpopulation has become critical to the point that snow geese are actually threatening their own survival. It's a story we've all heard over the last several years, and not much is changing. 

More than a decade ago, game biologists realized that emergency measures had to be undertaken in an effort to find a way to reduce the snow goose population. Starting in 1999, hunters were first allowed to shoot snow geese in the spring during what has been termed the "conservation season." The original plan was to cut the population of snow geese in half by having no limits on the numbers of geese that could be killed and allowing the use of electronic calls. Hunters still must use non-toxic shot, but shotguns are not required to be plugged to hold only three shots, and magazine tube extensions increasing the capacity anywhere from two to eight extra rounds are quite common. 

Unfortunately, even with the huge increase in numbers of snow geese being harvested each year, surveys seem to indicate that the snow goose population continues to multiply (So much for hunting affecting populations). 

What the spring hunting season has caused is a dramatic change in the geese themselves. Snows have learned that their safety depends on hundreds or thousands of pairs of eyes checking out a spread of decoys. The adult birds hang above examining the decoys and rarely set their wings and try to land like Canada geese do. A few of the juveniles may try to break off and come in, even defying the coaxing back to the flock by the adults above them; but most of the snow goose shooting is pass-shooting, and spreads of several hundred to as many as a thousand windsock decoys are commonplace. It's all about numbers and motion to try to get them in close enough to shoot at. 

We were supposed to meet our guide, Mike McMann, who works for Up North Outdoors, at 6 a.m. When I got up and looked out the window of my room, after a shirtsleeve drive through Nebraska the day before, we were met with a day of horizontal snow. Directly across the parking lot from my window was one of those wooden weather vane ducks on a tall pole. It looked to be about six feet long from nose to tail, with the wings that spin when the wind is blowing. I could barely see it through the snow, and the wings were whipping around in a blur. Below the wooden duck on the pole was the sign that read, "Welcome to Mound City" - and it blew off the pole while I was watching. 

When we met Mike and followed him to the field where he already had everything set up, we found out that the temperature was hovering around six degrees and the wind was blowing the snow across the frozen fields at about 40 miles per hour. The only relief from the piercing, wind-driven snow pellets that drove into and stung every exposed spot was to climb into the layout blinds on the frozen mud. Mike's Labrador, Hunter, was the only smart one in the crowd - he stayed in the cab of the truck and slept. 

A spring snow goose hunting season is available in most of the states in the Central Flyway. While all have a population of migrating snow geese to some degree, Texas, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota seem to offer the best shooting.   The costs vary from state to state - new this year Missouri's Conservation Order permit is $5 for residents and $40 for non-residents. Some of the states require you to buy a regular non-resident waterfowl-hunting license to hunt snow geese. Nebraska, for example, I believe charges around $100. Check each state's fish and game department website for the seasons and prices and other pertinent snow goose hunting information and hunting regulations. (And you need a current federal waterfowl stamp.) Unless you are set up to move around quickly with a trailer full of decoys and layout blinds, it is almost impossible to compete with the guides and outfitters with their large decoy spreads and leased hunting properties. We hunted with Up North Outdoors Outfitters , which is owned by Tracy Northrup, the designer and manufacturer of Deadly Decoys windsock decoys. Deadly Decoys have a plastic spine down the back so that they stand out even when there is no breeze. I was impressed enough with his decoys to buy a dozen of his Canada goose windsocks to mix in with my full-body Canada goose decoys for this hunting season. Snow geese hunting has what almost amounts to a cult following. Hardcore snow goose hunters follow the migration - starting in Texas and moving north through the Dakotas. There are websites and discussion groups that report on the  spring migration daily and sometimes even hourly when the geese are moving. Three of the better ones are: www.huntingsnows.com,  www.nodakoutdoors.com:  www.duckhunter.net Like I said, you've got to see it to believe it; the spring snow goose migration is a "show" that everyone needs to see at least once!

And this was supposed to be fun? 

After a couple of hours and only a couple of geese down, Jeff told the guide that he couldn't take it anymore, and I sure didn't waste any time packing up my gear for the trip back to the motel. Mike Livingston, our Nebraska friend, stayed for several more hours and shot a few geese. I guess you gotta be tough to be a Cornhusker! 

Fortunately, the second day dawned perfect. Mike McMann moved us to a different field on a slight hill overlooking a frozen farm pond. He had about 600 or so Deadly Decoys windsocks out, and they presented a realistic look shifting in the wind blowing from behind. It really was just about the perfect setup, and we didn't have to wait long for the geese to arrive in long, noisy waves stretching to the horizon. And his electronic call sucked them in close. This is what we had come for. 

I learned a lot about snow goose hunting that day. Like I said at the beginning, I had gone along blindly at the invitation of my friend Jeff. I knew that we were only allowed to shoot the "light" geese - snows, blues, and the little Ross's geese. We couldn't take the "dark" geese - speckle bellies and Canadas - during the spring season, but until someone pointed them out to me, I couldn't tell the difference between species of legal geese. But it didn't much matter, because I also learned that an "old guy" gets quite stiff lying in a layout blind on the frozen ground and can't sit up and shoot as fast as the youngsters when the guide hollers to shoot. So the very first thing I did when I got home was to buy a battery-operated heating pad for the bottom of my layout blind - I am anxious to try it this season! 

That first day, in the blowing snow, I was in a Final Approach S.U.R (Sport Utility Blind), which was about like climbing into a mummy sleeping bag. At 6' 4", I didn't have room to move around at all and no room for my shells and other gear. On the second day, I was in a Final Approach Eliminator Pro-Guide XL blind, which had much more room and was considerably more comfortable. That's the layout blind to have if you are a larger hunter or if you just want room to move around and not feel claustrophobic. 

While I was finding out that I couldn't sit up and shoot as fast as the young guys, I also discovered that a hunter shooting an over-under or even a three-shot shotgun is at a definite disadvantage when your hunting partners all have autos with magazine extensions. They start shooting before you find the first bird and are still shooting after you run out of shells. Since I was slower to get into position to shoot, I decided to just wait; and after everyone had emptied their magazines, I would smack a couple of geese with the lO-gauge when they were just about out of range for everyone else. By the way, Jeffs Terror choke tube live up to its name - it is a real goose hammer at long range. 

Unless you have your own snow goose hunting setup like Mike Livingston does outside of Lincoln, it is nearly impossible to go to an area like Mound City and find a public spot to hunt. The outfitters have most of the better hunting properties leased for years in advance. And, considering the decoys and equipment necessary to bring the wary birds into range, it just doesn't make sense to head for an area and try to "freelance" hunt. But for the truly dedicated snow goose chaser, the public and private lands all through the Great Plains - from Missouri, to Nebraska, to the Dakotas - offer ample opportunity to take a stab at it. 

So on my first snow goose hunt, I learned the hard way that they don't come easy. Snows present an honest waterfowling challenge - and I certainly won't call them stupid anymore!