Schrader favors shells, too. When he hunts fields, he'll place as many as 800 decoys out at a time, and he and his hunters will don white Tyvek suits and lay among the fake geese.

Schrader also uses "stuffers," taxidermy-grade decoys made from the skins of real birds. He's got about 100 and uses them when rain isn't in the forecast. They cost about $100 each, so it's understandable that he wants to preserve them as long as he can.

"I use a small spread of stuffers when I hunt ponds. The birds will leave a roost pond in the morning to feed, and under ideal conditions they'll come back in small groups throughout the rest of the morning. You only need a small spread, so I'll use the stuffers mostly when I hunt ponds," he says. "The fewer the birds, the easier they decoy."

Wallace agrees and says snows are undoubtedly the hardest birds to kill, thanks largely to their tendency to travel in large flocks. When he has more than one party hunting on the same day, he tries to put the groups close together, creating the illusion that several flocks of snows are using the same section of a marsh. He uses about 150 decoys per blind.

The good news, adds Wallace, is that while Canada geese get harder to lure into gun range as the season progresses, snows become easier. That's not because they get dumber. On the contrary, hunting pressure has increased substantially since the Canada goose season was axed in the 1990s, and the birds are much more leery of bad spreads and sloppy hunting.

Wallace says the birds are more vulnerable later in the season only because food sources become a more precious commodity. Snows that once traveled only a few miles now have to work harder to find fields untouched by other geese. He also does well later in the season because those birds that spent their winters in southern Virginia and North Carolina are starting to work their way north and are unfamiliar with areas that get hunted hard throughout the season.

Even with hungry birds and a diminishing food source, Wallace says greater snow geese are still the hardest birds in the world to kill. He adds that his parties rarely bag a daily limit of 15 birds. Schrader says his hunters occasionally take home a full game bag, but more often than not, they should consider five to seven geese a good day. Who could complain about that?

Public Opportunities
Maryland's chief waterfowl biologist, Larry Hindman, says public hunting opportunities are limited, but they do exist. The problem, he admits, is that hunting on any public area is good only if the birds are using them when you show up.

"I've hunted Tuckahoe State Park in Queen Anne's County, and I've killed a fair number of birds there. I've also done pretty good at Assateague Island National Seashore, which is located in Worcester County on the Virginia border," he adds.

Some public areas limit hunting pressure through a lottery system, but Hindman says later in the season, it's common to get in on a standby basis. Other areas, specifically the state wildlife management areas, are open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis, but lots of hunters can mean lots of decoys. That can pull birds down that might not otherwise be interested in a smaller spread.

Delaware also has good public opportunities in Bombay Hook and Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuges as well as in numerous wildlife management areas. Virginia also has a couple of public hunting areas, including Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge and Princess Anne and Mockhorn WMAs. Princess Ann is located on the mainland south of Virginia Beach.