With limited public land holding geese, most hunters seek honkers on private agricultural fields. Arkansas and Desha counties in the Grand Prairie region rank among the best places to hunt snow and specklebelly geese in the state. The agricultural fields east of Monticello and south of Stuttgart can provide good goose action as well. Other fields near Brinkley, Gillette and DeWitt also hold some geese. Some people grow rice near Morrilton and Carlisle. (Cont.)

"Goose hunting success on the Grand Prairie can vary by location," said Mark Barbee, an AGFC biologist from Monticello. "Some people had good success last season in the rice fields. This part of Arkansas usually attracts a lot of geese that follow the Mississippi River."

Fortunately, most landowners, especially farmers, want people to chase pesky geese away from their crops. Geese can inflict a tremendous amount of damage on agricultural crops in a short time before they move to another field. If people find a concentration of geese, they might well receive ready permission from the landowner; others hire guides with access to good fields.

A good field may attract a flock of snow and blue geese numbering in the tens of thousands. In fact, white goose numbers increased so dramatically in the past decade that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service opened a special "conservation order" season on them after all other waterfowl seasons close. During the conservation order season, wildlife officials allow sportsmen to use electronic calls, unplugged shotguns and other means to bag as many snow geese as possible. People may hunt for longer hours and kill unlimited white geese during this special season.

The federal government encourages the increase harvest of white geese, because the northern Canadian tundra habitat can’t support the burgeoning population. The superabundance of snow geese existing at present is inflicting severe damage on the birds’ ecologically fragile breeding grounds in the tundra near Hudson Bay. Like sheep, geese pull plants up by the roots, creating mudflats. Without plants to anchor the mud, tides wash away the slush, erasing wetlands and available breeding habitat for geese and other species. With such a short growing season in the frigid Arctic, it takes years for tundra ecosystems to recover from the damage -- if ever.

Gigantic populations of geese don’t necessarily translate into cassoulet or honker jerky. Enormous flocks of white geese don’t respond well to decoys. Hundreds of sentries watch for anything suspicious. To bag geese today, people often need access to multiple areas. Geese might feed in one field, stripping it bare of anything edible in a few days, and then disappear to another area, not returning for several weeks. Many people can’t afford high prices for leases, hoping that birds appear, so they hire guides with access to thousands of acres of prime goose habitat.

"Geese are hard to hunt," Coker said. "Some people do it, but it’s hard work, because they move so much. They eat through a field and then move to another one. People have to stay on top of them, because they become leery quickly."

If you find geese, you shouldn’t attempt to hunt the main body, as you’ll never fool 20,000 geese, and will probably chase them away instead. Hunters should rather try finding two large bodies and positioning themselves between the flocks in order to pick off stragglers flying between the two concentrations. A single, a pair or a small flock might respond better to calling or proper decoy placement than will a huge flock.