Resident-Goose Hunting in Maryland with Jeff Kreit
Big Decoy Spreads
 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 competing with the growing number of hunters to take those resident geese?
Kreit: To attract the flights of resident geese we need to hunt successfully, we have to out-compete the other hunters with bigger decoy spreads. There are three of us who have trailers and carry 20- to 30-dozen decoys each. So, when we’re hunting in the late season, we’ll combine our decoys to make a gigantic spread. We may have over 1,000 decoys out at one time.
Question: How much time do you require to put out a spread of decoys that big?
Kreit: It takes about 1 to 1-1/2-hours. We get to the field about 5:30 am to start putting out decoys, and we usually have them all out and ready to hunt by about 7:00 am. Then, we take our trucks and trailers south of the field and hide them where the geese can’t see them.With a decoy spread that big, we’ll usually have six to eight hunters. We need help to get the decoys out and in, and then when we have a flight of 100 or more geese coming in, we usually can do pretty well.
 Question: Why do you like the Avery Outdoors fully-flocked decoys?
Kreit: They don’t shine in the sun like the plastic decoys do, and they’ve got an extremely-good motion system so they look more realistic. Remember that resident geese are looking at decoy spreads every day of the resident-goose season. Therefore, anything we can do to make our decoys look better and more realistic drastically increases our odds for taking resident geese. If your decoys are moving, then they look like live geese and not like plastic decoys. With that big decoy spread, we’ve got a much-better chance of getting those resident geese than the average goose hunter who may only be putting out 10-dozen decoys. When you’re hunting really-big flocks of resident geese, the more decoys you have out, the better your odds are for being successful.
Tomorrow: How to Hunt the End of the Season
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