Goose hunting, long time between flocks.

[JaggyBunnet]

Earlier I was hunting geese, and although the game started at an ok pace, once I switced to my last box of shells it seemed to die a quick death. I waited over 30 mins for a flock to come by and when it did, nothing broke. Two more flocks 10 minutes after that and still nothing broke away. It was 45 minutes real time before I had geese break.
I am new to goose hunting, I was wondering if this is normal. it seems extreme that we should need to wait this long between flocks. Since it was a multiplayer game and not able to be paused, I found mysef not wanting to leave the screen just in case I missed the next lot of birds.
I'm not expecting a flock every 5 minutes but it is a game, I find no fun in watching an empty sky for that long. Would it not be better if the flocks of birds had a time limit between them to avoid such a lengthy wait ?

[Levado]

The callers being used, how they are used, the number of decoys, the placement of the decoys, the size of the field, the location of the field, which waterfowl blind you use, etc all effect how eager the geese are to land. Some even claim (I can't confirm it) that other animals in the area other than geese may affect their willingness to land and some players use a gun to drive these animals away.

According to the wiki In multiplayer mode you can lure more geese when one player uses the long range caller and another uses the flag lure. Personally I never had to wait 30min for a flock to arrive and I've killed over 2,000 geese in this game, so you must have had some bad luck. I know a player who has shot over 21,000 geese in this game and I can ensure you that he wouldn't have shot that many when he often had to wait a long time for a flock to arrive and geese to land.

[Fletchette]

You didn't mention how long it was good before it slowed down for you, but yes, there is a pattern with goose flocks spawning. Although people disagree about whether time of day matters, (I don't think it does), the first 1-2 hours of a goose hunt is usually much better with more consistent flocks appearing. It then seems to slow down for a while, before they start spawning again, but still less actively than during the first 1-2 hours. They also seem to come in spurts later in the hunt, with some long delays followed by several flocks in a short period before it slows down again. No idea whether this is intentional, but it's always been that way.

And yes, there do seem to be periods where the likelihood of breaks decreases for a while after a slow period, but it usually does increase again.

For these reasons, I rarely hunt geese for more than 1-2 hours before quitting and just starting a new game.

[JaggyBunnet]

I was 1 hr 20 mins into the game and had already harvested 40 geese.
I have 24 decoys in a diamond pattern 5 metres apart, and the blind I'm using is specific for Hirschfelden.
The caller I'm using is the flappy bird flag, I use this almost constantly as soon as I hear the geese, (I'm not taking into account the flocks that are too far out to respond)
The field it's located in is smaller than some, coordinates 8776 -312 (west of the river, top left field south of the bridge)
Could it be the field is too small ?
Thanks for the replies guys. If I'm doing something wrong, this is what I'm hoping to resolve.

[Levado]

The field you're at is far too small, geese won't be so eager to land, they prefer a lot of space to land, you need a much larger open field, the larger the better, preferable near the center of the map, pretty much the same applies to ducks (water area). What's the number that indicates the number of decoys, which is showing on the map of your launcher? 24?

I use this almost constantly as soon as I hear the geese

Good, but keep using it even when they're close to disappearing, there continues to be a chance (if smaller) to break the flock.

I'm constantly switching between flag and long range caller, I seem to be getting better results with that and the wiki seems to confirm this.

Btw, there is no need to spread the decoys and keep 5m between them. It gives no additional benefits and it makes it far more time consuming to move them to another spot, unless you prefer the aesthetics.

[Beano8U]

I was wondering if multiple decoy setups effect the flocks in the area you are hunting also. I have quite often found that I hunt in one spot for a while with now flocks, fast travel near another setup and find 20-30 geese landed there. As they are hanging around setup 2, they are obviously not flying over setup 1. They also could be landed in random fields. I found that restarting the game if I don't get good flocks works well, but not in a comp unfortunately.
One other thing I found (maybe coincidence), I use the flag to start with and switch to the long range caller after they have flown over. Seem to get more break that way.

[JaggyBunnet]

The decoy number shows as 24,and this is the only set up I have. It was a formation used in a youtube video by another player, who seemed to have success with it after trying a few different patterns.

It looks as though I'll have to up sticks and move to another field. The reason I didn't set up in the middle of the map where a lot of players do, is I have a pig feeder in that exact spot. Not for long it seems.

I decided to only use the flag caller as it's supposed to have the same attraction as the long range caller. I read a few players were doing this as the constant spam of the LR caller gets annoying.

I know that in a multiplayer game with 2 players using 1 of each, it doubles up on attraction. I didn't know it made a difference switching between them in single player though.

Again, thanks for the replies ! it all helps.

[ronMctube]

a little tip it works (some will say its coincidence i proved it many times even done it in dev live stream ) when ducks or geese don't come in its because another animal is in the area.by that i mean wild boar , deer.this is when you haven't had a break or seen a duck or goose for some time. take a gun and fire it a few times this should spook whatever is in your area. shortly after geese or ducks will come in. i dont know exactly why the animals other than the birds you after wont come in while whatever animal is in the radius but i have done this repeatable hundreds of times.

[stancomputerhunter]

Fletchette and Ron McTube have it pretty correct. Also, geese land elsewhere on the map while you are playing. They go to sleep for up to 15-30 minutes real time. Sometimes firing a shot in the air is enough to wake them up and get them moving again.

[L3M182]

I was always led to believe ( and to an extent found to be true) is that we have a pool of unspawned geese that spawn fly across the map and de spawn. And after a few hours this pool will be decreased by killed birds and birds that break off and bed down in a field somwhere. And the smaller “pot” of geese left to make new flocks results in less traffic. Spooking sleepy g birds into the sky and back into the “pot” I have found helps. Same with ducks. Gawells are by far the rarest species, if you have an extended hunt killing lots of ducks by then end it becomes mostly gadwalls