The spring light-goose season has been ushered in by a series of snowstorms and blizzards this past week – holding snow geese at their southern most destinations. With snow cover blanketing areas of New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, it has become clear that this abnormal weather will make for a very abnormal spring migration.
Hello folks, and, as always, welcome to Waterfowler.com.
The State of the Union is cold and snowy. While there is a difference between Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland and our nation’s current Winter Wonderland, weather conditions can best be described as “Curiouser and curiouser!”
After a number of perfect storms during the fall migration, snow pack continues to build in the northern states and blanket areas of the south for the first time in decades. In short, the wintering grounds of mid-continental light geese are wintery. Hunter success in the Deep South has improved dramatically over the past week as goose activity and feeding increased with the storm – provided you could make it past the snow-covered roads to hunt.
Not surprisingly, hunter participation under the conservation order is down this week as southern states struggle with snow removal and clearing the main arterial roads. For the northern hunter that resides in areas where snow removal is an advanced, exacting science, understanding the crippling event a snowstorm can be is often overlooked. In states like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois, clearing millions of cubic feet of snow from thousands of miles of roadways within a 24-hour period is business as usual. For many areas in the south where most don’t own a snow shovel (let alone a snow blower) snow like this is unusual business.
Information on the Snow Depth Map (link at right) indicates significant snow pack across most of the Great Plains and Northern Mississippi Flyway. When the spring melt finally and light geese push north, the pristine, white landscapes will be replaced by the mud light goose hunters know so well. In all likelihood the northern migration of light geese will advance at a steady pace as the snow slowly recedes.
Waterfowler.com encourages our readers to post their light goose adventures on both their state report pages and the snow goose report page. We look forward to hearing about your adventures as we follow the geese north.
Until next week, make your spring light goose hunting plans today.
