Snow Goose Migration

The snow goose migration continues to run ahead of schedule due to the abnormally warm winter and now beginning to Spring. Good harvest numbers are being reported through northern Missouri, west central Illinois, and now into portions of Nebraska and South Dakota.

The large masses of juvies that typically bring up the rear of the migration never seemed to show this year. The young birds stayed mixed in the the adults due to the strange weather this year. This is the point in the season when in typical year, southern Missouri and Illinois snow goose hunters are not seeing many birds, but what they are seeing, they're killing. This year is not the case. Few groups of snow geese remain across these areas and most hunters aren't wasting their time chasing the snow geese. The birds seemed to be running a week to 10 days ahead of schedule this year. Some birds remain in parts of west central Illinois and with the warm weather success has been great, but they'll be gone in the coming days.

Further west in Missouri, large numbers of birds remain staged in areas around Squaw Creek. It's cooler there today, but temps will be on the rise by the weekend and into the 60s by early next week. Hunters are reporting huge numbers of birds and are killing 30+ a day in each field due to the number of juvies around. On the good weather days, adults are being killed as well. The latest survey from Squaw Creek shows 327,000 snow geese remain on the refuge with many many more in the area.

Squaw Creek aerial Survey

Hunters in Nebraska and South Dakota are killing birds as well. Nebraska hunters seem to be in the same boat as Missouri with a split of juvies and adults. South Dakota snow goose hunters are seeing/killing mostly adults. The leading edge of birds has crossed of I90 which puts them about halfway through the state. With the forecasted weather over the next week, they'll continue to make a strong move north and will likely be into North Dakota by early next week. The forecast calls for 60+ degree temps pushing as far north as North Dakota next week. What snow pack is there, will be gone in a hurry and you can bet those temps will be accompanied by a south wind sending birds back toward their summer ranges.

As always, don't get excited when the first push of birds shows up. They're the adults birds and they've seen it all. Unless you want the exercise and wasted time of setting decoys to kill a couple birds, be patient and wait. In this case, you won't have to wait long after they start showing up because they're going to be moving north in a hurry!

Here's one of our videos from earlier in the season where we were snow goose hunting with no ecaller.