it's all frozen over

Well all the ponds are frozen over and there are just a few spots of open water and those are drawing in some ducks and the occasional goose. So what is a person to do? Well geese like to rest on open water in fact just check out any place with water open and a hundred geese are in a 10 by 10 area, but they do leave to eat and that is the ticket for harvesting your limit of geese. Like deer hunting your chances for success increase the longer you stay in the blind and with it frozen over the field is where they want to be eating left over beans and corn. If it has snowed you can put out some straw in front of your feeder decoys and by kicking the snow back and exposing the dirt it appears that they have been eating and pulling up clumps of grass. This past week I had the opportunity to hunt over some stuffer decoys and two of them were locked in and cupped up on rods about 5 feet over the spread and that really added to our layout. Keep your sentry decoys to the front rear and sides feeders in next and if you have any resting they should be more toward the center. I mean you never saw a resting goose sitting on the edge of a flock. Now I like a U shaped pattern or a V and I always start by setting my decoys on the perimeter, then I set one sentry out about 40 yds out in front of the  blind so I know when they are in my shooting range. I will set a few alert decoys and some feeders in front of the blind out about 15 feet and fill in  leaving a nice landing area in the center. Try to keep the wind at your back or even better set up so when the geese decide to set they are setting across your field of view and not looking directly at you when they commit to land and coming to your house for dinner. If you ask 10 people you will get 10 different explanations on setting decoys so my thing is to do what works for you at that particular time for that situation.