Chasing Spring Snow Geese In Alberta

High-volume snow goose hunt near Lethbridge, Alberta with Chinook Outfitters — Benelli AI barrels and Fiocchi steel loads deliver deadly long‑range performance.

by Scott Haugen

A cool breeze blew from behind us at a steady pace. A skiff of snow made the 22-degree temperatures feel much colder. The first two flocks of snow geese came straight into the decoys. There was no circling. The shots were simple. Then the glowing horizon erupted with birds.

“Get ready,” smiled fellow outdoor writer, Brad Fenson. We’ve known each other for years, but this was our first time sharing a goose blind. “You might wanna grab an extra shell or two and hold ‘em so you can reload fast. This could get crazy!”

It seemed to take forever for the massive wad of geese to reach us. They never got more than 50 yards off the ground. The wind kept them low, and as cold as it was, the geese were hungry. They knew exactly where they wanted to be, and we were already there.

Close to 3,000 snow geese headed right at us. They were strung out for a half mile, all flying low. As the head of the flock approached, they twirled and tumbled closer to the ground, their wings slicing through the crisp air. By the time they got into shooting range, many were skimming the decoys.

Fenson and I tripled. We quickly reloaded. I missed a bird as it moved away. Fenson dropped one more. “How’d ya do?” I shouted over the screaming geese to Richard Kropf, my hunting partner for nearly a decade. “Dropped four for the first three shots, then reloaded and got one more,” he smiled. Kropf is one of the best shots I’ve seen. This was his first high-volume snow goose hunt in Canada.

“Load up, here come more,” Fenson urged.

As fast as we could load, we shot.

Juvenile geese had no clue what was happening and kept circling to land in the middle of our spread. Even adult birds in their pure white plumage dropped hard into the fakes, many passing directly over us to get ahead of the sock decoys to reach food first.

Every bird in the massive flock came to the decoys. When one group peeled away and nearly landed, the three of us tripled again. Twenty minutes later, the sun came out, and the wind screeched to a halt. We didn’t fire another shot over the next hour. It didn’t matter. We had nearly 100 snow geese on the ground. It was the best 90 minutes of snow goose hunting of my life. Shooting a few more birds just didn’t matter. It was a fitting way to end three days of hunting with friends in a special place.

The Snow Goose Setting

Fenson, Kropf, and I were hunting with Chinook Outfitters. Our hunts centered around Lethbridge, Alberta. Fenson, being from Alberta, has known the young men who now run the business since they were kids. They hunt together a lot in both spring and fall. Kropf and I were honored to be hunting with the hard-working, enthusiastic crew.

It was early April, and our timing was right. One hundred miles to the north, snow and ice kept geese from advancing to their breeding grounds. And while several thousand geese had been in the area for a few weeks, new arrivals kept showing up.

Initially, we targeted flocks of gullible, young geese, but fooled more adult birds than any of us imagined. A big storm in the middle of day one, and another on the last night, saw noticeable increases in snow goose numbers. Fenson was sure that, given the heavy snowfall, high winds, and cold temperatures to the north, many of those birds would bounce back down to milder conditions and readily accessible food.

“Those birds can cover 100 miles in no time,” he said.

One morning was supposed to be cloudy and rainy. It didn’t rain, but heavy clouds kept the morning skies dark. We ran a few hundred full-body decoys. The action was great until the wind died. Once that happened, thousands of snows split from their massive flocks and went in every direction in search of food. They bounced around fields like first graders in a soccer game. There was no corralling them.

On the two mornings when the skies were clear, we set out nearly 2,000 windsock decoys. I was leery about this, given my past experiences of using them for late-season snows in the Lower 48, especially on the West Coast side of the Pacific Flyway. In many hunts, we’ve put out more than 4,000 socks, never to have a single snow goose look at them. Watching thousands of birds fly by your decoys for hours is a helpless feeling. That wasn’t the case here.

As long as the sun shined bright and the winds held steady at six to eight, sometimes 10 miles per hour, snow geese kept decoying. The consistent winds funneled geese into the shifty decoy spread with precision. The bright sun and blue skies cast shadows across the big spread of socks, which hid us well. We were lined up in the center of the spread, each of our Final Approach Layout Chairs surrounded by tightly packed sock decoys. Between us, Fenson and I have had three back surgeries. These chairs offer great support, making shooting quick and easy.

A FoxPro electronic caller with two speakers changed the game. We’re not allowed to use e-calls for waterfowl in my home state of Oregon. I wish we could.

The Ultimate Testing Ground

Fenson, Kropf, and I were on a mission to test Benelli’s SBE 3 A.I. BE.S.T. shotguns. I shot one of these last duck season, in a 20 gauge. It impressed me that it dropped puddle ducks, even diving and sea ducks, with consistency. The season before that, I shot a lot of ducks and geese with the AI barrel in the ETHOS Cordoba. Total, I’ve killed nearly 400 ducks and geese with the new AI barrels. Those numbers give me the experiential knowledge to speak to the gun and the loads.

On this snow goose hunt, I was excited to try Fiocchi’s Golden Goose and Flyway Series loads. There was some Remington Duck Club steel in camp, but I’d shot enough ducks with that to know I liked it in my 20-gauge SBE3. I wanted to test these two Fiocchi steel loads in size 1 shot. I like shooting steel for many reasons.

My first two shots were the Golden Waterfowl, a 3-inch load pushing a 1 1/4-ounce zinc-plated steel slug at 1,300 fps. I often backed those up with the Flyway Series, a hot 3 1/2-inch load that moves 1-3/8-ounces of plated steel at 1,470 fps. This was a great combination, allowing for follow-up shots on distant birds that needed it, or picking birds out of the sky at extended distances as they tried to escape.

Overall, the Golden Waterfowl crumpled geese. Kropf, with whom I hunt a lot, ranked it among one of the most impressive steel loads he’d shot. He was knocking geese from the sky with consistent authority. He helps me test a lot of loads and guns every season.

But the jaw-dropper came with the Flyway Series loads late one evening. We had a good pile of geese and decided to pick up early so we didn’t have to work in the dark. We assembled a line of about 70 geese for a group photo. The birds were lined in the middle of the hole in the sock decoy spread. Just as we got set for photos, a low flock of snows approached. We scrambled to load our guns and dropped four birds. More geese were coming, so we hurried into our chairs.

Due to our big line of dead birds in the landing zone, every flock balked at finishing. With geese flaring 50 yards out, our shots were far. Richard was the first to try a longer shot with the Flyway Series payload. He killed a goose stone dead with it, all of 65 yards out. That opened the door for longer-range shooting. Over the next 20 minutes, we shot nearly 30 geese, nothing inside 45 yards, with some well beyond 60. Only two birds had to be run down.

You never know the capability of a gun or a load until you test it in a range of conditions at various distances. And it must be done on birds, not paper targets, clay, or gelatin blocks. We had a slight tailwind that evening, which helped our payloads fly farther and faster. Geese crumpled with impressive efficiency, period.

This high-volume snow goose hunt was the perfect testing ground to confirm what I already believed that Benelli’s new AI barrel technology simply works. Tight patterns that consistently drop birds at greater distances than I’m used to shooting, that’s what the AI system delivers. And I found two Fiocchi steel loads I look forward to using more next season, on geese and ducks.