Hunting cultures around the world have many similarities, but also many differences. From the way we are introduced to the lifestyle to the methods in which we take game, to the ways which we consume our quarry. We reached out to our friend Niko Lumio in Finland to get an idea of the Finnish waterfowl hunting culture. You’ll find many overlapping themes between the American hunting culture and that of our Finnish counterpart. Take a look below to see what Niko has to say about his experience hunting waterfowl in Finland.
Hi, I am Niko, a 24-year-old waterfowl hunter from Inkoo, located in southern Finland. It’s funny that hunting has been this big thing to me considering that none of my family members have hunted during my lifetime. Regardless, here we are and now I will tell you about waterfowl hunting in Finland.
The two geese species I hunt are Canada geese and Greylag geese. In some provinces, the Bean goose is also legal to hunt. The duck species I like to hunt are mallards, eiders, longtailed ducks, sometimes goldeneyes and wigeon. You can also hunt teal, goosander, pintail, shoveler, tufted duck and garganey.
My favorite animal to hunt is Geese, which I mostly hunt on fields using decoys. Earlier in the season I typically hunt them at sea in the archipelago. The duck hunting for me is concentrated mostly on the open sea or in the archipelago. I also hunt mallards on the fields, especially if the water is overflowing, then you can have a very successful session. Some of my friends have dug their own ponds and they’ve worked great! A lot of Finnish duck hunters that live a bit further from the coast normally hunt on lakes or ponds.
My interest in waterfowl hunting came straight after my first hunt ever, I was 15 at the time. My godfather took me hunting on a lake. We had our boat in the reeds and on the lake, there was a lonely Canada goose swimming around. I had a call that I started to blow, the goose started to answer and I just continued calling. The goose started flying straight towards us. Every hunter knows the feeling when your heart is pounding out of your chest. My godfather told me to wait until he said: “now you can shoot”. I took the shot and fell on my back in the boat asking “Did I get it?” and yes, there it was. Floating dead in the reeds.
After this, I started to buy my own decoys and gear, asking after fields where I could hunt. So I could eventually start hunting on my own. In the beginning, I sat in the ditch beside the fields very often, like too often, so I learned the thing that I think is one of the biggest things when hunting goose, that scouting is the key to success.
I practiced blowing calls, tried many ways to set up the decoys depending on the field and wind and of course hunting from blinds. Having a blind in the middle of a field with a field mask works great for Canada geese but the greylags are hard to hunt that way.
Hunting greylags from blinds works better if you can get the blinds into some higher grass, between a ditch for example. If you need to get the blinds in the middle of the field, it can work if you mask the blinds as swans, I’m not saying that it is not possible to succeed with simply a field mask in the middle of the field but it will be more difficult.
After a few years, I got a Goose hunting job as a guide in Sweden. It was a valuable experience, there were a lot of birds in the area and we had the chance to shoot a lot of them too. This trip gave me more motivation to Goose hunt and to learn more- and so I did.
Two years ago, I was asked to join a Finnish television series called “Eränkävijät – Love of the Wild” as a guide for one of the main cast members, I gladly accepted. The show became a huge success and has been sold to over 30 countries since.
My favorite way to prepare waterfowl is to slice the goose breast into about 1.5 cm (0.6 inch) slices and put them in a herb marinade. The marinade is made of:
4 dl oil
3-5 cloves of garlic
2-3 tablespoons of soy
salt and pepper
One freshly squeezed lemon
2 tablespoons of honey
At least 1dl of a rosemary and tinjam blend, you can put oregano too if you like.
Make the marinade in a plastic bag and put the meat in it. Let it marinate at least over the night.
Grill the breast pieces to medium.
The season for waterfowl hunting starts with eijder male from 1.6 – 15.6
We can start to hunt geese in the fields from 10.8 onward and the season ends 31.12
Duck hunting starts 20.8 and ends 31.12. From this starting date, you can hunt geese on the sea and in the lakes. As a side note, some species start 1.9 so if you are hunting in Finland, check the hunting schedules.
The Finnish regulations also include that hunting with lead ammunition is illegal. When hunting longtailed ducks you can only shoot 5 birds/hunter/day.
I think the best months for goose hunting in southern Finland are August and September, this is because there is a larger population still left before they migrate.
That being said, the Canada geese are moving later than the greylags so you can still have a successful Canada goose hunt in October and November too.
In northern Finland, the geese are far fewer than in their Southern counterparts. Central Finland becomes kind of a middle ground, where they do have geese in the earlier season but they migrate south quite shortly thereafter.
Duck hunting is pretty good all through the season, depending on where in Finland you hunt. They shoot ducks in the north as we do here in the south, but when the weather gets cold and the lakes and ponds are freezing over they start moving south. I would say that the best time for duck hunting in my area is from September until the sea freezes over or the hunting season ends.
My best goose hunt in Finland was back in 2015 when I invited two friends who had never shot geese before. I did some scouting the day before and found a great field with both greylag- and Canada geese. Early in the morning, before the sunrise we went to the field, set up the decoys and hid in a ditch. The morning started with some greylag groups that flew right to the decoys and we shot some. I was pleased already at this point because my both friends had shot their first geese ever but the morning had just begun so we continued to hunt of course.
We started to hear Canada geese and they just kept coming in a steady flow, straight for the decoys. We gave them a good shooting, picked up the dead birds, reloaded and again, there was a new group coming. Now, the Canada goose is much easier to hunt than the greylag goose. I have several times managed to call back a group of Canada geese that we just shot at. However, I had a feeling that we had enough of dead birds in the ditch already so we ended the hunt although there were still more groups coming. We ended up with 28 geese and we found three more of them later on from an unthreshed field that was behind us.
My best duck hunt was at this season when I went out with my dog on a small island in the archipelago. I put the floating decoys out and once the sun rose, the action started and it seemed like it would never stop. The mallards kept coming and it just didn’t seem to end. I shot a few birds and then let my labrador loose to retrieve them. Even when he was retrieving them from the water the mallards just came flying straight for the decoys so I shot more and sent him out again. After being in the zone for a little over an hour, my friend showed up. I’d shot twelve mallards and once he’d shown up, we got four more. The best thing with this morning was that my labrador-retriever had a lot of work and he did great!
Adding to all of this, I even managed to get my first banded duck.
If I could choose one place to go hunt waterfowl, it would have to be somewhere in the US or Canada. This is because there seems to be so much of geese and ducks, nothing to compare with Finland!
What do I think hunting in Finland will be like in 30 years? I think that the pressure on goose hunting is going to be tough like it’s now. It was different around 10-15 years ago, the rules and restrictions were much looser back then. What I hope is that the population of geese and ducks will stay strong so there will be no need for further restrictions. I also think that the amount of women hunters will grow. It’s been steadily growing in the last few years and I think the trend has been set.
The Last thing I dare to say is that the business side of hunting will increase- especially regarding goose, seal, and whitetail deer hunting.
Can you hunt King Eiders in Finland?