Most waterfowlers think of Arkansas as one of the top duck hunting states in the nation. More Arkansas sportsmen bag lone geese that stray over a blind than intentionally hunt the honkers, but the Natural State offers some excellent opportunities for bagging the big birds.

Arkansas sportsmen mostly target white-fronted geese -- also called "specklebellies," "snow geese" and "blue geese" (the third being really just a darker color variant of snow geese). Usually, Ross’ geese, diminutive white geese about the size of a mallard, also flock with their look-alike snowy cousins. Occasionally, sportsmen bag a few resident Canadas as bonus birds on some hunts.

"We have a good population of resident greater Canada geese in northwest Arkansas," said Randal Boyington, an Arkansas Game and Fish Commission wildlife biologist in Fort Smith. "They can provide a lot of action at times. People just need to scout to locate a flock; then they can contact the landowners. Many landowners, especially grain farmers, want to get rid of the geese that destroy their crops, so they allow people to hunt them."

Most Arkansas geese travel down the eastern corridor of the Mississippi River Valley. White geese may gather in enormous flocks from Jonesboro to Lake Village. They feed in adjacent rice fields on both sides of the Mississippi River. Other birds follow the Missouri River and pass over northeastern Arkansas. Some follow the Arkansas River down through northwest and central Arkansas. The Red River Valley in southwest Arkansas near Texarkana also holds concentrations of geese.

"Eastern Arkansas usually has some really good opportunities to hunt snow and white-fronted geese," said Mike Coker, an AGFC biologist in Brinkley. "Sometimes, it seems we have a lot more geese than ducks and not a lot of people hunting them. Our public areas don’t usually hold many geese, because they normally don’t have a lot of big, open fields. Most public areas in eastern Arkansas are bottomland habitat -- good for ducks, but not for geese."

Geese tend to prefer dry or mucky fields of wheat, corn or rice instead of swamps or flooded timber. Occasionally someone might bag a lone snow goose or specklebelly at one of the greentree wildlife management areas, but few public properties in Arkansas offer excellent goose habitat.

An exception to that rule is Bald Knob National Wildlife Refuge, which contains about 15,000 acres of wetlands and reforested croplands near the town of Bald Knob in White County. One of the newest federal refuges in Arkansas, this area made up of farmland cleared in the 1960s opened in 1993. Farm and moist-soil units combine with mudflats to provide habitat for geese and other birds.

Steve N. Wilson Raft Creek Bottoms Wildlife Management Area, a 4,000-acre area near Searcy in White County, offers some goose hunting at times. Some people hunt geese on Ozark Lake WMA in Franklin County or Dardanelle WMA in Franklin, Logan, Johnson, Pope and Yell counties. Since geese require grit to help them digest food, river sandbars can sometimes hold good flocks of geese, especially resident Canadas. Many people hunt the sandbars of the Arkansas River.

In eastern Arkansas, some people hunt the Mississippi, lower Arkansas, White or Cache rivers, although most geese in these areas fall as bonus birds for duck hunters. Established in 1935, the White River NWR preserves about 160,000 acres of bottomlands along the White River near the confluence of the White, Arkansas and Mississippi rivers. The nearby 56,000-acre Cache River NWR also offers good waterfowl hunting at times.