traffic vs X for early goose

[Braidwood Hunter]

Hey is it better to hunt a traffic field where you know you'll see the birds fly over.. or hunt on the X where there is a 50/50 chance of whether the birds will be there or not. We're only hunting about 60 geese.

[dirtycletus81]

I would say the X is the best way to go, but hunt whatever you can. I have a spot that is in the fly zone of 500 or more birds so I will have to put out a nice spread and flag a lot to get them to come in. They will be flying over me everyday at least twice a day. The key is to now over hunt them.

[BoWhoop]

how can an x be 50/50? Only use it on monday/wed/fri???:confused:

[Gary]

if u can hunt the x then kill away !!! study the birds as they feed and keep ur spread lookin like they do as u see them !!!!!

[Goose4280]

The x is always best. Not always best i guess but usually easier to get birds. I personally try to get fields that the geese are using but also near a lake or big slough for traffic purposes for early season. Sometimes fields are hard to come by so you have to just hunt whereever you can. I normally try to have a good field by a lake that holds geese. You can suck them in all early goose that way.

[h20fowler]

How many birds do you need? How many days do you want to hunt those birds?

My best advice, hunt the X and you'll have a great hunt. Manage the X, and you'll have a great season.

We hunt the traffic fields. Traffic for us is anything under the birds flight path, or in close proximity to. Sometimes, a traffic spot for us is the same field, but maybe 500 yards away from the "X" the geese were using. We do try to avoid that though. We typically only need 6 geese between the two of us. Baring all screw ups, that is two good working flights out of any number of huntable fields.

Our strategy slightly changes the last week of the season, or anytime we have a kid in the field with us. At that point in time, we hunt the poop. We figure our season is over, and we don’t care if we chase them off the X. At moist we’ll lose one or two hunts if we don’t have anything else lined up. If its a kid, we want in and out as quickly as possible. And if we do our jobs we are out of there before a lot of the birds are in the field anyway.

So – If you have 1 day to hunt in the early season, hunt the X. If you have 5 guys and all 60 birds are flying out at the same time, hunt the X. If you want to hunt it a couple times with a buddy, and the birds are flying out in little groups, I’d hunt traffic.

[Braidwood Hunter]

With the geese I'm scouting, it would be a 50/50 chance of hitting the X because they've been changing fields like crazy the last couple weeks. But they're flying in the same general direction everyday so I know I could hunt traffic. Not MON/WED/FRI or whatever that means.. one day they are in a field, the next day who knows. I usually don't hunt only one or two groups of birds, but these ones are all banded so I'm scouting them hard.

[h20fowler]

I think you have your own answer. If they are using the same vacinity and not the same fields then Traffic is the "X"

[cluckin-crazy]

Hey I think you also answered your own question, your X is the traffic and I'm bettin it might change again before the opener... welcome to my world here in great P.A. it will change two or three times for us just hope to have an X come the opener.. one good piece of advice is if you don't hunt that field keep an eye on it, what happens here is once they start pressuring the birds they start using the fields that they fed in and felt comfortable before the thinning of the flock started, we pick at them in these different fields that are in the daily journal all year..

[BoWhoop]

i dunno.. I say you hunt the y. the x isnt to be had and it doesnt sound like they're on the z much either