Snow Goose
• Snow Greeting – High-pitched, excited repetitive call.
• Snow Flock – Flock chorus lures small groups of passing
geese.
• Feeding Flock – Contented flock honks and clucks of feeding
geese.
• Flock Landing – Lures geese to land and join the decoys.
• Specklebelly Greeting – Excited contact calls when flocks
of geese meet.
Canada Goose
• Comeback Call – A pleading series of hail calls attempting
to draw back passing or departing geese.
• Feeding Call – A low-volume call of contentment among geese
in a feeding zone.
• Laydown Call – Descending geese make this quick and
repetitive single-note call when landing.
• Greeting Call – An excited contact call often made when one
group of geese meets another.
• Hail Call – A long-distance greeting made up of a series of
spaced, rhythmic honks.
Selecting the right call is more important in the spring conservation season than it is during the fall. During the spring conservation season you can use electronic calls and they are a huge advantage. Currently they are not legal during the fall (check your current regulations) . I consider electronic snow goose calls a must have item for spring snow goose hunting and prefer electronic calls that are powered by a car audio deck running 4 speakers. Car audio decks are much louder than conventional electronic predator calls and the ability to run 4 speakers lets you spread the sound out throughout your decoy spread. I prefer to have the speaker pointing downwind at approaching geese fairly close to the hunters blinds as decoying snows tend to focus on the call. The other speakers are pointing in random directions (make sure every direction is covered), with one pointing vertical in the middle of the spread.
Selecting the audio tape or CD for your electronic call is very critical to your snow goose hunting success. These snow goose recordings have proven extremely effective on spring snows due to the recording's incredible realism and clarity. Other recordings on the market are recorded too far away from the feeding geese so it sounds like a snow goose flock at a distance. Many recordings can attract snows to within 100 yards, but to finish them below that 40 yard mark, your electronic call must be playing the individual honks, murmurs and feeding sounds those snows expect to hear from a flock on the ground. What the snow geese do not expect to hear, but is commonly found on other snow goose recordings on the market are the sounds of airplanes, wind noise, tweedy birds, humans speaking, or the racket of humans playing snow goose calls. Don't let the huge advantage an electronic call gives you go to waste during the spring season by playing a poorly recorded tape or CD in your electronic call. CD's and tapes are relatively inexpensive yet can play an extremely important role in your success or failure of decoying snow geese.
Selecting a conventional style snow goose call is fairly simple. Any major sporting goods store sells snow goose calls, and your short reed Canada goose call can easily double as a snow goose call by tuning it to be a little higher pitched. Conventional calling is very effective on singles and small flocks. If a snow goose barks at you as it circles above, bark back immediately. This constant dialogue will often pull that bird in. We all know that once one bird commits, the flock follows.