Harris and his group will spend late November and early December hunting ducks, but they keep an eye open for geese. "Yeah, we still do a lot of early duck hunting, because the geese are a little slower arriving en masse," he explained. "We hunt ducks a couple of hours, if we have any to hunt, and then start driving around looking for geese. We do have a list of about 10 landowners from Greenville north to Clarksdale who call us if the geese are there -- but we are always looking for new places.

"If we spot big flocks, we stop, pinpoint the field and then find the owner. About half the time, he or she is glad to know somebody will hunt them. Of course, we get turned away the other half, but that's OK. You never know until you ask."

According to Al Thompson, the key to winning a landowner over lies in being gracious, and assuring him or her that respect will be shown to the property. "We offer them a list of previous landowners, kind of like references, and you'd be surprised how helpful that has been," he said.

SETTING UP
Once birds have been located, and permission granted, the team goes speedily to work. The first day is spent scouting the birds to determine the direction from which they approach, the time of their arrival and which way they're feeding.

"We usually don't go for the flocks that number in the thousands right away," noted Harris, "because they deplete the food supply so fast that you can't pattern them. If we can find a group of about 300 to 500 birds, then we can count on a few good hunts."

As soon as the birds leave the field, the group starts putting out their rags and decoys. "We'll go right to where they last were, and look to see if there's still food ahead in the direction they were feeding," said Thompson. "If there is, we stand a pretty good chance they will return there the next day. We go ahead and put out the rags. You can't have too many.

"We learned a long time ago that the more the merrier. Even if you are only hunting a group of about 200 birds, or even less, when they come the next morning and find 600 or 700 rags on the ground, they'll dive in quickly, kind of like they're mad other geese have found their feeding ground.

"At the same time, the more rags you have, the more easily spotted they are for traveling geese. When the geese have really arrived in the Delta, you will see 10 or 20 huge flights of geese flying high every day. They're looking -- and you want them to see you. They may not come down if they see the rags. But they certainly won't if they don't."

Never put the rags in the area in which you want the geese to land. "It took us a year to learn that trick," acknowledged Harris. "We kept putting out rags and decoys, and they kept landing out of gun range. What we found out from researching goose tips on the Internet and in magazines and books is that geese land on the fringes, especially when you're dealing with the big groups of snows and blues like we do.