All The Tools to Hunt Canada Geese for Under $230

Photo copyright 2011 by Helenah Swedberg.

Have you ever thought about hunting Canada geese for food but don't know where to start? There is still enough time to get into shape as a beginning goose hunter before the September season starts.

I suggest that you watch this video that was filmed by Helenah Swedberg on the same day that The Perennial Plate was filming. In my next few blog entries I'm going to break up what we did in that video into a series of simple steps.

First, lets talk hardware. Notice that we were extremely low-tech and low-cost.

1. Weapons. The shotgun I am using in this video is an old pump-action 12 gauge Mossberg 500 that I paid about $150 for, used. You can get one brand new for around $400, or find one used for between $200 and $300.

2. Decoys and calls. We didn't use any. In areas that have an over-population of Canada geese there are going to be geese coming by sooner or later. Sit by a pond near a food source long enough and a flock will show up. I rarely use mechanical calls to bring a passing flock in. Instead, I make a pretty good goose call with just my voice and my hand. I have a very high success rate with this.

3. Retrieval. When hunting over water, most of the geese will be out of your reach. The usual method is to have a specially trained dog to get the birds for you. Bird dogs are great, but if you don't have one then there are other ways of doing it. In the September season (as opposed to the separate fall and winter season) it will be warm enough to go for a swim to fetch your geese. I have done this (I was prepared by already hunting in my bathing suit) and I will do it again. A boat works fine if you happen to have one on hand. If you won't have a boat and don't want to go swimming then bring a long, heavy fishing rod with you and rig a big snag hook to the end of the line. A cheap surf rig can be had for as little as $25. Maybe a couple of bucks for a snag hook. Fetch the dead geese by reeling them in.

Total cost of hardware to start hunting geese: About $225.

In my next blog entry I will analyze the tactics that we used in the goose video to be very successful very quickly.