How to Make a Snow Goose Decoy

Large decoy sets near water is the best recipe for snow goose success!

Hunting snow geese is easiest when birds are migrating across the country. However, in most cases, to even get a small flock of migrating snow geese to come into shotgun range, you need a decoy set, and quite a large one at that. Sometimes, guide services have decoy spreads numbering in the thousands. However, for most recreational hunters, spreads of this size are often out of a comfortable price range and may be logistically difficult to handle.
There is a way to build your own easily packable and inexpensive snow geese decoys. Flag decoys or windsock decoys are commonly used for goose hunting in fields and shallow ponds, and have proven quite effective. Follow these steps to make your own.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Tyvek material Shipping grade plastic banding 3/8 inch hardwood dowel rods 3/8 inch bolt retainers Scissors Needle and thread

1. Cut out the goose decoy bodies. Make the body 23 1/2 inches long and 13 inches wide. Make a pattern out of cardboard so that each body is exactly the same (this is important for proper fit and look of the decoy), and lay out the patterns along the entire surface of the Tyvek material. Cut all of the bodies out using the scissors.

2. Use the needle and thread to sew two bodies (top and bottom) together to make a single windsock decoy. Roll a 1/2-inch lip back on the front of the windsock decoy, and sew the ends down. Cut a short section of the plastic banding and slide it in the "pocket" you just created around the windsock lip. This serves to hold the front of the windsock open so that the sock can easily be filled with air.

3. Cut a 3/8-inch hole in the top and bottom of the decoy body. Cut the dowel rod to into 18-inch sections, and sharpen one end. Slide a bolt retainer 8 inches down the dowel, followed by a decoy body. Then cap the top of the dowel rod with another bolt retainer to keep the decoy from sliding off.

Tips & Warnings

• If you hunt in corn fields a lot, where there is lots of ground cover, you may want to lengthen the dowel rod stakes to 24 inches instead of 18 inches.

• You can also add a bit of black spray paint at the tip of each decoy to act as wingtips of the snow geese.

Resources

• Article on building your own Windsock decoy spread