"That tells you that these geese get used to the calling," Rue said. "Most geese are killed by the call rather than the decoy, and getting it right is paramount to having a good hunt. I've found that the better-looking your decoys, though, the less calling you need."

CALL FORWARDING
David Smith is another hunter who has used calling to his advantage, killing snow geese when others can't. Smith, of David Smith Hunting, in Welsh, recalled a hunt many years ago that convinced him he had to learn more about calling.

"I was out trying to get close to some geese one day and a blue goose flew right over my head close enough I could see his tongue every time he honked," Smith said. "The sounds that came out of that bird's mouth were simply amazing. None of it sounded like anything I had ever heard coming from a mechanical goose call."

"Hunting a decoy spread without movement is like going fishing in a boat without a motor: You'll float on the water and catch a fish or two. But put a motor on there and watch what happens." --David Smith

It wasn't long after that bird that another blue goose flew over Smith. "The same thing happened," he said, "but this time it was an entirely different sound coming from this goose. I realized right then and there that geese are just like humans, in that no two sound exactly alike. When you blow the same goose call over and over, you make the same sounds. Learning to call with your own vocal cords will help you kill more geese today."

According to Smith, that's why so many Cajun guides help their customers to straps full of geese. They eat, sleep and breathe goose hunting, and they learn how to call vocally. There isn't any technique involved in learning, though -- other than just getting out in the field and practicing until you get it right.

"You can get blues and snows in with one note," Smith asserted. "If you can learn that note it will work for you. It doesn't have to be the clearest or sharpest note, either. I've gotten to the point where I don't even carry a goose call to the field. Specks, though, are a different story because they speak their own language with a series of notes that are hard to mimic vocally."

DECOY EVOLUTION
Like Rue, Smith recalled the good old days, when he could kill a limit of snow geese over newspaper placed out in a decoy spread. Of course, Smith used windsocks too, like most other hunters back then. Needless to say, geese don't respond to newspaper anymore, and are rarely fooled by the socks.

"What I see with the rags now is that you'll get geese coming dead at you while you're just sitting there with your gun in your hand getting ready," Smith said. "They'll get down to that range just above where your shot will be effective, then flare and go back the direction that they came from. It's getting to the point that they see that erratic movement that the socks present, and they hear the popping sounds they make in the wind."

Smith has remedied decoy-shy birds by using only full-bodied decoys that sit on pendulums allowing the decoys to move when the wind blows. The only movement you're going to get out of a decoy with the legs attached, he said, occurs when the wind knocks it over.

"Movement in decoys is everything," Smith added. "Hunting a decoy spread without movement is like going fishing in a boat without a motor: You'll float on the water and catch a fish or two. But put a motor on there and watch what happens. The same goes for decoys. You can kill birds over a spread that isn't moving, but put some movement out there and watch what happens."

But don't think you can add movement with a spinning-wing decoy. Smith said that anything that moves as fast as those spinning-wing duck decoys won't do anything but scare the geese out of the country.

"Geese have more of a power stroke every time they flap their wings," he said. "Ducks are like a hummingbird. Geese don't have to move their wings that fast because their longer wingspan gives them move lift with every beat."