Hunting   Canada Honkers

Canada geese are educated these days. I just surpassed 50 years of waterfowl hunting, and I’ve witnessed the changes.

We once hunted geese with black flags on stakes, tires cut in half with wooden heads, and silhouette cutouts painted in Canada goose colors. Old decoys are now replaced with flocked head magnum versions and battery-powered swimming decoys. A few lucky hunters in the old days had big sets of full-bodied decoys made of plastic or a composite material that to this day I can’t identify.

Mediocre calling fooled geese in the 1960s and ’70s, when most calls were made of wood or plastic and very inexpensive. Olt, Lohman, Herters, and Faulks controlled the market with their surprisingly effective calls, with hunters swearing by their favorite.

Calls today are acrylic and cost more than $100. The old sounds we once made are replaced with double clucking, come-back calls, and perfect goose chatter. The geese and hunters got smarter.