Resident-Goose Hunting in Maryland with Jeff Kreit
Decoys, Calls and Blinds for Resident-Goose Season
 Editor’s
Note: Jeff Kreit of Baltimore, Maryland, an avid geese
hunter and an Avery Outdoors Pro Staff team member,
has hunted geese since he was 3-years old. He hunted
only the Eastern Shore of Maryland until about 14-years
ago, when the resident population of geese in Maryland
exploded. “Instead of hunting out of pits like
I usually would, I bought a trailer to carry my decoys
and layout blinds and became a mobile goose hunter,”
Kreit says.
 Question:
Jeff, when is Maryland’s resident-goose season?
Kreit: We have two resident-goose seasons. The first
one starts September 1 and ends September 25. The late
season runs from November 14 to February 14. We scout
and locate where the resident geese are feeding, which
oftentimes is in a cow pasture. I know almost every
farmer in the resident goose-hunting zone of Maryland,
and I also have a number of family members who own farms
in the area. When we’re setting up for the early
season, we always put our decoys out in front of our
layout blinds and leave a hole in front of the blind
where the geese can land. I’ll usually put out
20 to 30 dozen Avery Outdoors fully-flocked geese decoys.
I prefer to have my geese come in from the side rather
than straight in, so I’ll often use a J-hook-type
of decoy spread. This way, I can take the geese as they
come into the spread from the side.
Question: What kind of blinds are you using?
Kreit: I prefer the Avery Power Hunter blinds because
they have extremely-low profiles. Often we’ll
be hunting in grass fields and won’t have a lot
of stubble to brush-up with, so a low-profile blind
works best.
Question:Where are these geese coming from, andwhere are they
going?
Kreit: Most of these geese come from farm ponds, and
they’re usually flying to a feeding spot to feed
for the day.
 Question: How many of these resident geese can you
take?
Kreit: We can take eight-per-day in the early season
and five-per-day in the late season. Most mornings we
can get our limit in 15 minutes to 3 hours, depending
on how many people are hunting with us.
Question: What kinds of calls are you using?
Kreit: We use Zink’s Paralyzer SR-1 goose calls.
In the early season, we don’t have to do any flagging,
but in the late season, we have to use flagging and
many of the same tactics we’ll use when we hunt
flyway geese.
Question: How many days do you usually goose hunt in
the early season?
Kreit: Primarily, I’ll hunt 12 to 15 days of the
season and take a limit of the giant Canada geese almost
every day.
Tomorrow: Resident Geese vs. Atlantic Geese
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