Delaware makes up the majority of the Delmarva Peninsula (with portions of Maryland and Virginia completing the land mass) and is directly between the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River, Delaware Bay, and Atlantic Ocean. Located within the Atlantic Flyway where millions of ducks and geese annually migrate from their northern breeding grounds to their southern wintering grounds and back, Delaware’s plethora of water features and agricultural fields offer waterfowlers a duck and goose hunting paradise.
Duck Hunting
Just as thousand of hunters anxiously await and prepare for the annual opening day of deer season, Delaware waterfowlers mark their calendars for the opening day of duck season. Duck hunters can be found in the late summer and early fall cleaning and painting decoys, blinds, and boats; applying reeds and grasses to blinds; training their retrievers; and spending hours at the shooting range practicing their wingshooting. Many Delaware waterfowl hunters also participate in deer and small game hunting, but there are some hunters who hunt waterfowl exclusively. These die-hard waterfowlers know the superb hunting that Delaware has to offer.
Canada Goose Hunting
Because of its location in the Atlantic Flyway, the area between the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware Bay is considered one of the best goose hunting locations in the United States. With the multitude of agricultural fields and bodies of water essentially acting as goose magnets, waterfowl hunters from across America travel to this region to hunt Canada geese and snow geese.
Snow Goose Hunting
Snow geese breed in the Arctic region and migrate south in the winter, frequently spending entire winters along the Atlantic coast where food is more plentiful. In fact, one of the largest concentrations of wintering snow geese can be found at Delaware’s Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge. Migrating snow goose flocks can be immense, sometimes consisting of thousands of birds. Unlike Canada geese that may make wide circles when landing, snow geese drop from the sky in closely packed, tornado-like spirals. When large flocks land, the visibility of their white feathers can be seen by other birds in flight and will usually attract other flocks. Snow geese are herbivorous, eating aquatic plants, grasses, sedges, and grains.
The above excerpts are small samples of the information you can find in the book Hunting The First State: A Guide to Delaware Hunting. For more information, click here.