Resident-Goose Hunting in Maryland with Jeff Kreit
Resident Geese vs. Atlantic Geese
 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, how are you hunting late season?
Kreit: I’ve been hunting many of the places I’ve hunted for 17 to 20 years. In the late season, the resident-goose season really can be exciting because when many of the small ponds freeze-up, the resident geese will move to the big reservoirs. When these geese come off the water and into the fields, they’ll be in flocks of 100 to 300. That’s when we’ll put out a large decoy spread of 40- to 50- dozen Avery fully-flocked Canada geese decoys.
Question: How does the State of Maryland tell the difference between resident geese and migratory geese?
Kreit: Biologists done extensive studies on banded geese taken in Maryland, and they’ve established a road system that distinguishes the resident-goose sh ooting zone from the Atlantic Population. We define the two zones as RP (Resident  Population) and AP (Atlantic Population). Most of the time I hunt resident geese because we have a longer season for the RP geese, and we can take more birds than the people who hunt the AP geese.
Question: Are there many people who hunt Maryland geese in Maryland?
Kreit: In the last 3 years, the number of people hunting resident geese has probably tripled. When my friends, George Zahradka and Wayne Radcliffe, and I started hunting resident geese, we were about the only ones hunting them. But now it seems everyone’s hunting the resident geese. The records indicate that there are over 1 million RP geese from Maine to South Carolina. But the resident geese have gotten smarter as the number of hunters has increased. So, we really have to blind-up better, use more natural-looking decoys and do a better job of calling than we have with fewer hunters. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still hunt AP geese, but the resident-goose zone is closer to my home, and every day I hunt, I can take more geese. So, I usually hunt RP geese.
Tomorrow: Big Decoy Spreads
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