Goose hunt OK'd by state

northjersey.com ^ | 01.08.09 | SCOTT FALLON

[AnAmericanMother]

Geese are just impossible. Dirty, nasty, noisy.

They're fine in the middle of a marsh or an Iowa cornfield, but in suburbia they are NOT welcome.

Eventually even the PETA animal apologists get sick of it, but they insist that we can't hunt them (some of them even complain that the Border Collies are "cruel" to the geese). I personally would make them clean up all the goose byproducts all over parking lots, sidewalks, etc. with a toothbrush and plastic bag. Or even bare hands.

[therut]

They have let the Canada geese run wild in our state parks. The swimming places get closed all the times cause of the goose poop. Rolls upon rolls right into the water. They need to kill them all.

[dennisw]

I see some reeally good eating there

[TheBattman]

The number of snow geese in North America has increased to more than 1 million in recent years — twice the ideal population, state officials said.

Having lived in the rice growing area of Arkansas for the last 14 years, I have seen the population explosion of the Snow Geese. I have seen winter wheat fields as big as 100 acres turned into nothing but a muddy field by these beasts.

But I believe the number is far larger than even the "more than 1 million" that is being bantered about. Having gone for drives down small country highways - and seeing fields that hold 10K + snow geese every few miles - I wouldn't be surprised if this time of year, here in Arkansas, we hold probably 1/4 - 1/2 million of these pests. And they will not usually migrate further south - they usually stay here until the end of March.

The US Fish and Wildlife service actually are the ones who pull the plug and allow these "conservation hunts". They have been authorizing them for the last 5 years or so. But each state's own regulatory agency has to approve as well.

I assume that farmers can still get permits to use other means to kill/remove these pests. These birds are like rats or roaches - very difficult to control once out of control.

[TheBattman]

Couldn't get any closer to get a good picture - but this field held about 12K snows when I took this picture. There isn't a wide-angle lens that could have given a real feel for how far these geese were spread out (not from each other - they were right on top of each other).

I have seen fields far more covered than this - and one time that an Arkansas Game and Fish wildlife officer watched with me once that the estimate was over 30K geese - in ONE field! You wouldn't believe the noise level

Very common to see them cover - with very little gap between them - 75 acres or more.

[TheBattman]

Yeah - Canada Geese are a completely different bird (and taste different too!). Canada Geese, when they establish a local year-round population become a real nuisance. They are often belligerent and even aggressive. I don't know if the population is still there - but there use to be about 80 or so “year-rounders” that made a home at the Remington Arms plant in Lonoke, Arkansas. If they decided to cross the road in front of you - DON'T honk the horn - they got VERY mad - and would even sometimes attack your car! And boy can they make an area STINK in short order!

[pandoraou812]

I like walking barefoot & happened to slip in some goose poop years ago. It was sooooo gross. When there weren’t so darn many of them I used to love to watch them fly north & hear their honking. Now they have just become too many. I don’t mind a few but I no longer see the ducks I did years ago either. We used to have ducks we fed right from our dock . Just regular brown ducks but I have not seen any in years.

[101voodoo]

How about seeding their food supply with a form of birth control? This was done in MA with racoons in certain areas where rabies was a problem among them.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

Goose, an Indian word meaning sh*t covered walkway.

[Question_Assumptions]

We need a federally approved urban hunting season for Canadian Geese here in the South.

New Jersey needs a genereal depredation order for them during the parts of the year when the migratory birds aren't passing through. They are like walking feathered rats around here and are covering every pond and open grass field with bird droppings and they weren't there just a few decades ago.

[R W Reactionairy]

I suppose you could try birth control, but why not harvest them?

When I was living in New Jersey, companies were actually paying people with dogs to chase Canadian geese onto other peoples ponds and lawns ... and to grease eggs so they would not hatch. Seemed like a big waste to me.