Story and Pictures by Craig Bihrle
North Dakota Outdoors - Sept./Oct. 1998
For the third time in the 1990s, North Dakota's snow goose limit is going up. From five to seven, from seven to 10 and now from 10 to 20, you might expect the snow goose harvest to go through the roof, which is exactly what wildlife agencies want.
However, given a similar set of circumstances, higher harvest has not always followed a daily limit increase. Surprisingly, the opposite has occurred.
In 1990, when the Mid-Continent snow goose population first exceeded 2 million birds, the limit increased from five to seven. North Dakota's annual harvest fell from 125,000 to 90,000.
In 1992, when the daily limit went from seven to 10, North Dakota hunters killed only about 60,000 snows and blues, down from about 140,000 in 1991, and lower than any other year since 1968. Obviously, daily limit is not the only factor influencing snow goose harvest.
The Mid-Continent population now numbers 3 million birds, about twice as many as management agencies would like to see, and time is running short to reduce the number of now geese before they irreparably damage fragile arctic breeding grounds. While doubling the daily limit and removing possession limit may help some, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department felt hunters needed more opportunities to significantly increase snow goose harvest.
While states have to follow federal waterfowl hunting frameworks, one of the factors Game and Fish can influence is shooting hours, which the Department has restricted for more than 40 years. Given the seriousness of the situation, however, Game and Fish waterfowl managers feel a break with tradition - allowing hunters to shoot geese all day, instead of half-days, on Saturdays and Wednesdays starting October 10 - is a worthwhile experiment. "There's really little else we can do, as a state agency," says Mike Johnson, the Department's migratory game bird management supervisor, "to quickly increase the harvest of snow geese."
It is an experiment, however, that comes with concerns.
The key, Johnson said, is to confuse snow geese once they've established a feeding and resting pattern, without adding so much pressure that birds leave the state, either northward or southward.
"It's going to be real balancing act," Johnson said, "to see if we can actually increase the harvest without, in the long run, drawing it down even further."
Half-day History
Increasing goose harvest led the Game and Fish Department to experiment with shooting hours in the mid-19SOs. "The problem was," Johnson said, "with full day hunting, hunters would pursue birds all day and the geese never really got a chance to loaf or feed, and they were simply run out of state real quickly.
"Half-day hunting was put in place to...encourage birds to stay in the state longer."
The experiment worked. While federal frameworks allow goose hunting from one-half hour before sunrise to sunset, within a few years Game and Fish converted the entire state to half-day goose hunting. Snow goose harvest climbed gradually at first, topping 5O,000 for the first time in 1967. It cracked 10O,000 for the first time in 1974, then set the all- time high in 1975 at about 185,000. Since then, the average North Dakota harvest is a bit under 15O,000.
Half-day shooting, in combination with waterfowl rest areas and other federal and state refuges, Johnson said, "played a major role in allowing North Dakota hunters to take from one-third to one-half the snow geese taken in the Central Flyway today."
Put simply, North Dakota has good snow goose hunting. But it is seldom easy, and just doubling the daily limit probably wouldn't increase harvest much. Over the last four years, the average North Dakota goose hunter killed just under four snow geese per season, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And that was with a daily limit of 10.
As the snow goose population has increased, the average age of that population has increased, and as birds get older they apparently get smarter. They have adapted to half-day hunting, they fly in larger flocks, and when hunting pressure in an area becomes too intense, they shift their migration. In recent years, more and more snow geese are staging in Canada where hunting pressure is light, some just across the border from North Dakota's traditional staging areas. Some even bunk at North Dakota's refuges and fly across the border to feed to avoid harassment.
"All these things make it more difficult for hunters to get snow geese," Johnson said.
Whether periodic full-day hunting makes it any easier remains to be seen. Certainly, snow geese - and Canada geese as well - accustomed to a relaxing afternoon feed are in for a surprise two days a week. But snow geese tuned to dodging decoys in the morning probably won't leave caution at the refuge line in the afternoon.
The most effective way to increase harvest, Johnson feels, is to increase the number of hunters. "I think it's much harder to increase your overall harvest by increasing the bag of a few hunters, than it is to have a whole bunch of hunters out there," he said. "Full-day hunting may serve to draw more people out to hunt snow geese, just because it's something different."
And if more people come out to hunt, will they add enough pressure to drive geese away? The answer to that question will generate considerable attention this fall.
CRAIG BIHRLE is associate editor of North Dakota OUTDOORS.