Monsters of the Midway

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when southern Illinois was considered a mecca for Canada goose hunting, and clubs in the area would be packed with hunters from all over the Midwest and beyond during goose season. The thousands of Canada geese that gathered in southern Illinois in the fall and winter made that region fertile ground for honing the finer details of honker hunting. Innovations designed to give goose hunters an edge­­—including the Hess/Grounds short-reed goose call design—were developed here during the 1970 and ’80s, revolutionizing the sport.

The Shift

Today, most of the geese that once crowded national wildlife refuges and surrounding farmland in southern Illinois have shifted their wintering range north, creating a honker hunting bonanza in Chicagoland. “This area started to blow up as a Canada goose hub in the late 1980s and early ’90s,” says Brian Griffin of Griffin’s Hunt Club. “The boom in suburban development created absolutely perfect goose habitat. We have endless amounts of retention ponds, golf courses, neighborhood lakes, forest preserve land, and agricultural fields right outside of most towns and cities.”

The same is true in northwest Indiana and southeast Wisconsin, where plentiful local geese thrive in an ideal mix of agriculture and suburban refuge, which migratory birds also find very attractive. The hot zone runs all the way up through Milwaukee and west towards Madison.

A New Era

Griffin has been guiding for the past 20 years at Porter's Hunt Club, and this year he purchased the club from its founder, Matt Porter. “I am looking forward to carrying on the legacy that he started back in 1993. I've known him since I was probably 10 years old.”

The sprawling Chicago suburbs support growing numbers of resident geese, and as fall progresses, migratory geese from the north bolster local flocks. “It's difficult to get a good estimate for our peak goose numbers because of the size of the area and the amount of goose habitat, but it’s hard not to find geese on any neighborhood park and pond,” he adds.

As Windy City residents can attest, plenty of geese live in the city itself, with hundreds of birds gathering on green spaces surrounding the museums and at Solider Field along Lake Shore Drive, home of the real “Monsters of the Midway,” the Chicago Bears.

Even during periods of frigid weather, geese rarely vacate the city entirely, although that is when true city geese venture out into the surrounding countryside to consume high-energy waste grain. When ice becomes an issue, geese concentrate on rivers, deep quarry lakes, and even Lake Michigan.

Adapting to Urban Geese

“I have been waterfowl hunting in southeast Wisconsin for just over 40 years, and at one time harvesting a Canada goose was a big deal,” recalls Jon Klema, a longtime DU supporter and waterfowl hunter. “The changes are nothing short of amazing. I am very fortunate to have a bunch of younger guys that I hunt with, and I remind them often of how lucky they are to have this wealth of opportunity. It really is like night and day.”

To put it in perspective, according to Klema, in the past there were two Canada goose harvest management areas in Wisconsin: the interior zone surrounding Horicon Marsh Wildlife Area in Dodge County and the rest of the state. “For years the migration went through that interior zone, and it was ‘the place’ to harvest geese. Very few geese were to be found in other parts of the state, and I don’t really recall anyone targeting them,” he explains.

But times have changed. As goose numbers have increased, so has interest in hunting them, and securing access to any field, let alone a hot one, can be difficult. “There is a lot of competition to secure land to hunt, which wasn’t the case 25 years ago,” Klema says. “Large numbers of birds equal a lot of interest. I have been very fortunate to have retained very long, cherished relationships with some farmers and landowners in my area. In Wisconsin, a landowner can give someone permission to hunt their land, and as long as no money is exchanged, the landowner has no liability. So, until recently, there was no leasing for permission to hunt.”

While Klema is happy to see more hunters join the sport, he is concerned leasing will change the nature of hunting in the area. “Access will become more difficult, especially if landowners begin to expect additional income. It will make it tough for somebody to get into the sport. With so many hunters banging on doors, a lot of landowners no longer allow hunting; they just don’t want to deal with the hassle.” 

Focus on Food

As in other parts of the country, the key to hunting Canada geese in the Chicagoland area is to find where the birds are feeding. While hunting on the X is always tempting, savvy goose hunters often avoid ground zero and instead focus on working traffic between a feeding and roosting area.

“For the most part, we are running traffic up here,” Griffin says. “Scouting is huge, and we make the rounds several times a week checking our fields. There are times when the birds are hitting our fields and we can let the feed build, but we're mainly looking to set up between where the geese are roosting and where they're feeding. Hunting a feed is always a blast, but I believe you can manage your birds a lot better by running traffic on them and picking them off as they head to the big feed.” 

Griffin continues, “Corn is definitely king in this area, and birds need a lot of it to build a fat base for the tough winter ahead. That being said, there have been years when some of our soybean fields have been our top producers. And late-season geese can't resist a winter wheat field on a cold, sunny day.”

Klema’s game plan is very similar. “There really is no rule of thumb, and our spreads vary for each hunt. It depends on if we are running traffic or if the birds have been using the field we hunt in,” he says. “For instance, right now we are in the slow time between early season and prime migration, so we throw everything we have at them. If we happen to get on a feed, we reduce the size of our spread.”

“I have been doing this for a long time, and I’m convinced these birds have seen just about every possible type of spread you can imagine, so I like to mix it up. Sometimes we’re successful, sometimes not. But that’s hunting.”