With gas prices on the decline, a winter goose hunt to Maryland's Eastern Shore might seem more feasible now than a few months ago. Outfitters and guides are able and ready to put hunters on Canada geese and, in some cases snow geese as well.

Larry Hindman, a waterfowl official with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said the number of Canada geese will please hunters.

"The area around the Chesapeake Bay, particularly on the Eastern Shore in the range of the Atlantic population of Canada geese, is going to have an abundant number of geese." said Hindman. "There will be a lot of young birds, so hunting success should be reasonably good."

Though the directed effort is much less for snow geese, there will be plenty of them.

"This is the year of the snow goose," said Hindman. "There will be a lot of young birds in the snow goose population ... which will play in favor of hunting success."

Though the Canada goose is sufficiently challenging in its own right, expect to kick things up a few notches if you plan to pursuing snows. Due to the bird's shifty nature, far fewer hunters target snows than Canadas.

"I don't think the average hunter pursues them," said Hindman. "There is a core of guys that hunt snow geese. And there's a few outfitting services that specializes in snow geese. But the nature of the bird is that it moves around a lot. It is difficult to pattern. You want to be hunting in the field the birds were in yesterday afternoon. You want to be there the next morning.

"A few of the outfitting services have the ability to access property in both Maryland and Delaware because of their contacts, so they follow the birds, and can be reasonably successful at it.

"The guy that rents a farm for Canada goose or snow goose hunting probably has a much better chance at taking Canada geese than he does snow geese simply because they are so tough to decoy, unless you happen to be in a spot they want to be on. You have to be willing and able to follow snow geese around if you want to be consistently successful on them," he added.

Lots of preplanning still doesn't guarantee success with snows. As Hindman explained, snows often show little to no respect for even the best-laid plans.

"The problem is, you can set up in a field they were in yesterday morning, go set up your 700 decoys, and the birds can come by and light a half-mile or mile down the road, and you have no access to that property," explained Hindman. "That's the problem. They are tough. And anybody that hunts them will tell you that, so, by and large, a lot of our waterfowlers don't hunt snow geese."

In recent years, snow geese bag limits have been liberal and the seasons lengthy. This has to do more with the limited population impact of hunting than the dire need to reduce snow geese numbers. Though lesser snow goose numbers have escalated to a level in which significant breeding habitat destruction has occurred, this isn't the case with the greater snow goose, which is the bird commonly found in Maryland.

Late-season Maryland hunts for both Canada geese and snow geese run from mid-December into the early part of March, providing a lengthy period of opportunity. Information on guides and outfitters can be obtained by visiting the website www.outfittersandguides.com/maryland.htm.