Describe your goose decoy layout

[Grouse Man]

How does everyone set up their goose decoys in the field? How far apart, number of dekes, ratio of feeders/sentries, where do you place yourself, relation to wind, etc.

Generally, I position the feeders on the swaths or the green shoots, and have maybe 1/4 sentries. I point them towards the wind generally, and spread them out randomly. I've got maybe 30 dekes, no flags, no socks, just 3-d decoys. In the past I've positioned myself upwind of the decoys, to the side, and also downwind (so they fly over me first). Some days I have great success, others - not so much.

 

[the spank]

We find it varies from day to day but we try to set up with the decoys looking as much as possible like they are relaxed and in family groups. Alot of the places we hunt the shooting spaces can be confined, house here, barn there, livestock etc. so we play it according to our safe shooting lanes and wind and sunrise direction. Ultimately we prefer to have the wind and sun(if there is one) at our backs so the birds are landing at us head on. We run anywhere from 1/2 - 6 dozen fullbodies and up to 5 dozen silos depending on a few factors, sun , wind direction, cover in field, # of birds using the field, # of blinds to hide, etc. Typically we put the decoys out in family groups from 4 -12 in size with pockets between the groups large enough to finish the birds into and coming in at us or slightly angled in the direction of our best gun swing for shooting from a seated position. There is nothing I hate more than birds having to work in from behind where you cant see them approaching to see the body language to read them. We usually put a few decoys behind us as though they are sneaking away from the main flock for better pickings and we always have a few that we place to look as though they have landed and are walking in with the spreads of over a dozen. We also set any duck decoys away from the geese slightly but still looking like part of the whole. We put our mojo's next to us where we can reach up and take them off the poles when geese approach, seems to us like geese shy awy from the mojo's unlike ducks. And if we put out a snow or two we set them off one side or end as well. In a large spread of 6 dozen fb's we have one dozen lookers/sentries, a dozen actives , 8 resters and the remainder feeders. So 24 uprights, 8 resters and 40 feeders. Our fb ducks, we run 30 and they are 6 resters, 16 feeders and 8 actives with 3 mojo spinning wings and if there is any water in the field a few floaters thrown in.

 

[catnthehatt]

We run about the same as Spank, actually , I only have one "robo duck" though!
We paln on getting some more ducks as well, and putting them off a bit rom the geese.
(I don't turn the MOJO on unless there are ducks mixed in with the geese that are coming in, it doesn't seem to matter to them then, but we are hunting usually local geese and ducks that have been around all summer, not the Northern flights coming down.
I don't know if this make sa a difference or not however.
One thing we are going to do is change our spread when the sun is in our faces - it normally isn't, bt on the last hunt it was, and the geese were flaring pretty bad . We still shot nine ducks and 8 geese however.....
Cat

 

[fdegurse]

Lazy L which is alomst a "V" into the wind depending on the rise or knoll we set up on,

We switch a lot of set ups some are in the front of the notch or v otherwise we're behind it most of the time with the dekes around us,

 

[RoscoeT]

Usually a large X with us in the middle with the wind at our back.

We setup 36 super magnum shells.