Early Goose Season

This past Saturday I had the privilege of participating in the early Canada goose season. This season was started as a means to provide some form of control over the resident goose population. The term "resident goose" implies that the geese in question remain in Illinois or wherever else they are throughout the winter and do not migrate. This behavior change is caused by the abundance of food that can be found in Illinois mainly in the form of waste grain left in the fields from harvest along with the recent tendency towards mild winters in the Midwest. As long as there is some form of open water in addition to food nearby, geese will stay through the winter. This can lead to overpopulation problems along with habitat degradation in the areas where they are living.

So as I said, the early goose season was started to control this resident population of geese. The season runs from September 1 - 15 with the limit of geese being 5 per person per day and a total possession limit of 10. Originally the limit was 2, same as regular goose season, but that was not putting a big enough dent in the population so it was bumped to 5.

Anyways, last saturday my uncle Mike, his friend Dave, Dr. Tom, and myself set up a dozen decoys in a recently harvested oat field that had alfalfa growing in it and recently spread manure on it. My uncle had seen geese using the field and sure enough at 6:45 the first flock came in, landing just outside of the decoys. After deciding it was time to shoot something we opened up on them, dropping 3 or 4 out of that flock. After retreiving our birds we did not have to wait long before more flocks of geese started landing in the field. Another advantage of the early goose season is that the geese are dumber than a box of rocks. At one point there were 40-60 geese that had landed in the field and while we were shooting at others flying overhead, these geese just sat there and watched their kin fall from the sky without even a honk of concern. Being as most of these geese were just hatched this spring, once we would shoot a few out of a flock, all we had to do was make a few come back calls and the geese would turn around and fly back over us to be shot at again.

At the end of the morning we finished out with 17 geese for the freezer, we should have limited out completly but we were a little rusty from last season. All in all it was a fantastic hunt and I feel blessed that I have these opportunities in life.

Suck it PETA.