Begin preparing well before the season. Secure permission to hunt on farms you believe geese will use during the coming winter. Many farmers lease their fields for hunting or hunt the land themselves. But geese sometimes damage winter wheat crops, and there are plenty of landowners who allow respectable sportsmen to shoot geese if plans are laid before the season.

Obtain permission to hunt several fields, because there's no way to know where geese will be day to day during hunting season. Then when the season opens, determine where the geese are. If you're lucky, a flock or two will be feeding in areas you have permission to hunt. If not, get back to work. Find out who owns the land that birds are using, and see if they'll grant permission for a hunt. Then return well before daybreak to set up.

Study movement patterns of the geese throughout the season, identifying feeding places, loafing areas, roosting sites and flyways between each. White-fronts select feeding fields at random, but when they start using a field, they return daily until the food supply is exhausted. If you had no luck hunting them on one area, you may get a better chance when they move to a new feeding site. Or if they fly over or near your hunting sites when traveling between roosting and feeding areas, you may be able to lure them to your hunting area using decoys and calling.

Because white-fronts usually are found with flocks of snow geese, most hunters use the same decoys and decoy spreads used for snows. Many use white trash bags filled with rice straw or white rags staked with wooden pegs. Spreads of 500 or more aren't unusual, and most hunters supplement the makeshift decoys with a few windsocks, silhouettes, shells and full-bodied decoys that look like white-fronts. White-fronts tend to gather in small groups at the edge of snow goose flocks, so place white-front decoys to imitate that behavior.

Arrive at your hunting area well before daylight, and hunt with several partners to hasten placement of decoys. Don't bunch the decoys too tightly. A spacing of 5 to 10 feet is about right. That gives the appearance of a relaxed feeding flock and provides space between decoys for an approaching flock to land.

Some hunters dig knee-deep pits in the field, big enough to put their feet in while sitting comfortably on the ground. Dirt is piled on the downwind side (the side from which geese will approach), and when geese drop into the spread, the hunters lean forward, using the dirt mounds for concealment. Check with the landowner before digging holes and always fill them after the hunt.

When properly camouflaged, you sometimes can lay in the decoys without being detected. In snow goose decoy spreads, hunters often wear white smocks, coveralls or wrap themselves in old sheets, thus becoming, in effect, part of the decoy spread.

Specklebellies have a call quite different from Canadas or snows. Hearing that call helps attract them to decoys, so it's wise to obtain and study an audiotape or DVD that teaches the proper sounds to use.

One call to use is the two-note yodel, made by saying "wa-wa, wa-wa . . ." into the call. Both high-pitched and low-pitched yodels are used as a hail call to draw the attention of distant birds. When a flock nears, switch to the feeding call, which is made by grunting "ku-luck" into the tube. Continue calling until the moment you shoot.