No longer is hunting Canada geese considered to be only a water-based sport. Over the past decade, field-hunting has become one of the hottest -- and most surefire -- ways to put birds in the bag.

A successful field hunt for Canada geese, as with most species, begins with scouting. Your best bet for all but guaranteeing a slam-dunk hunt is to go out the day before you plan to hunt and find a field full of geese.

At this time of year, you can count on finding Canadas feeding daily in harvested fields of corn, soybeans, peas and other crops. In November, the birds normally leave their river or lake roosting sites each morning to go stuff themselves with food to nourish themselves on their annual southern migration. Flying several thousand miles over the course of a few weeks, they burn a lot of calories.

Scouting for fall geese is easy! Simply drive back roads near farm fields at dawn, and you can literally follow incoming flocks to their final destination. During the fall migration, most working dairy or crop farms will have birds on them almost daily.

See where they land, find the landowner and ask him for permission to hunt them.

When you see a flock, hit the ground. Take note of the exact spot in the field where geese are feeding. For whatever reason, that's the area they prefer, so that's where you want to set up your blinds and decoys. Get a general idea -- from a distance -- where the geese are feeding.

Then, the next morning when you go out to hunt, look in that area for fresh droppings and for the down that the birds pulled while preening the day before. Such sign will help you zero in on the exact spot in the field where the geese want to be.

If you can't gain access to a field where geese are feeding, try to find a field nearby that the geese tend to fly over as they travel to and from their nighttime roosting sites. If you can get under the geese with your decoys and blinds, you're still in the game.

DECOYS
Before we get into how to deploy decoys in your hunting field, first it's important to talk about what kinds of fake geese you have to choose from.

There are three basic types -- silhouettes, shells and full-bodies.

Silhouettes are the lightest and most portable. The shells stack nicely on top of one another and may be carried in bags. The full-body models are the most realistic, but also take up a lot of room and are difficult to transport in large numbers.

If you don't mind buying a trailer and can drive into any field you want to hunt, then spend your money on full-bodies. They are, hands-down, the best option for fooling even the wariest Canadas. If you don't want to spend money on a trailer, or if you know you're going to have to carry your decoys some distance by hand before you can set them up, consider shells and/or silhouettes.

Actually, all goose hunters would do well to have some silhouettes. They help add motion to a spread, even when there's no wind blowing. Because they are two-dimensional, silhouettes appear to move as live geese fly around your spread and shift from looking at the dekes' thin edges to getting a profile view of them.