Everything you need to know about hunting specklebellies (aka the greater white-fronted goose)

THE BASICS

White-fronted geese behave very differently than Canadas and, to a lesser extent, snow geese. They’re the first geese to leave the roost in the morning, often showing up with mallards before first light. That means your best opportunities will come in the first half-hour to hour after legal light. Just know they’re suspicious nature makes them the most difficult of all our geese species to consistently kill, so you can’t afford to make mistakes.

One upside is they’ll often come out in family groups first thing in the morning, providing successive waves of shooting opportunities. On particularly calm and clear mornings, however, they’ll often come out all at once, and your chance to shoot can be over in minutes.

The best mornings are sunny and windy—the sun creates shadows to help keep you hidden, while the wind keeps the geese low and on course. The challenge, however, is that morning winds tend to swing, so your once-perfect decoy spread can become a barrier rather than an attractant. For that reason, some prefer hunting specks in the afternoon, when the wind direction tends to be more consistent. Another advantage to afternoon shoots is that specks don’t always day-roost together, leading to smaller flights and extended hunts.

Early in the season, specks tend to fly in family groups, but as the fall progresses, they’ll stage and feed in progressively larger flocks. These geese are an early migrant to the prairies, and usually move on through by mid-October. And while Canada geese prefer to avoid snow geese, specks don’t mind them; it’s not unusual to have mixed hunts of the two species. (See next page)