doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Euthanizing Wild Geese in the Netherlands

The New York Times has an article on an operation to kill wild geese to lower their toll on farmers and airliners.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/15/world/...ts.html?src=twr


Imagine loading up a couple of double ten bores (AYA Matador for instance) and shooting geese till your shoulder can't take it anymore. The geese could be given away.

That could be a resource for them. Too bad.

That would be some hunt. I don't have a good waterfowl shotgun except for an H&R single barrel 12 gauge but I'd pack it go in a heartbeat.

Govt policy bans goose hunting.

Govt policy to control over population is to pay someone to kill them.

Yes, and that costs the tax payer unlike the hunters who would pay to hunt. That's Government economics for you.

Geese populations in the U.K. have increased over the last few years. Greylag geese, which used to migrate north to breed, now breed all over. Canada geese have been on the pest list for a few years now and can be shot all year round if they are a risk to human or animal health or damaging crops. September 1st. to January 31st. they can be shot for sport. We also get Egyptian geese which were introduced and have got out of control in eastern England and can be shot as pests. I see odd ones now in my area. I wonder if less people are hunting them now since the lead ban. Lagopus.....

In the early 20th century, nonnative arctic foxes were introduced on most of the Aleutian Islands as a fur resource for harvest by Aleut natives. When that market subsequently collapsed with changes in women's fashion, the foxes were left to breed unchecked and had soon eaten the Aleutian Canada Goose and other bird species almost to extinction. In the 1970's, the Fish and Wildlife Service found one particularly inaccessible island where foxes had never been introduced, and on it a surviving population of geese. Under the Endangered Species Act, an intensive program of fox elimination on other islands was followed by goose reintroduction. Today the descendants of those geese are so abundant that they are a major problem for farmers on their wintering grounds on the northern California coast. There is now a late hunting season on those farms to encourage the geese to move on.

I am familiar with this story because my introduction to hunting was shooting foxes in the far western Aleutians in 1975.

I was living in AK when they were eradicating the fox on some of the islands to help preserve and grow the population of the Cackling Canada goose.

At the time I did a fair amount of calling and trapping where I lived in W AK, for red fox. My hunting and trapping buddy and I talked about how we would like to participate in the eradication of the fox on some of the islands. In retrospect, there was plenty of red fox at the time on the YK Delta to keep us busy.

Bulk killing of critters is hard work. They never seem to want to cooperate.
Definitely kill them after they are in the trailer.

The fantasy of standing somewhere shooting until your barrels are hot is great, right up until you have to deal with an endloader bucket full of dead geese.

Twenty years ago I was trapping pigeons, on the roof of a friend's building to use for dog training and a limited live bird shoot. When found out, the City and LEO had a real problem with my doing this to those "lovely" birds. So I was forced to stop. When I found out later they city was using rat poison to reduce the pigeon numbers I had no problem letting others learn of their actions. It was not hard. Birds were dropping dead every where.

They should have let me deal with the problem for free. They ended up hiring someone to trap and relocate the birds. Didn't work. Surprise, surprise the birds flew back home, often faster than the person who was releasing them. A pest only stops being a pest when dead.

This is not true - farmers have had the right to shoot geese on their own land for years in The Netherlands. More recently - they have been able to allow other hunters on their land with nuisance permits. It is a complicated process involving government inspectors coming to verify crop damage is present before permits are issued - but hunting is allowed.

I spent a week there back in February shooting greylags and barnacle geese primarily. There are also Canada geese, Egyptian geese and a few specks - but most of the shooting is greylags and barnacles. It was not extremely high volume (fall shooting is typically better with uneducated birds) - but most hunters would shoot 5 to 15 geese per person per half-day shoot. Regulations are strict and the guide basically has to carry a 3" notebook full of permits for each field he is allowed to hunt. Certain species are allowed or prohibited on certain fields depending on what the inspector decided was causing crop damage. The most liberal laws are in the airport zone where you can use automatic callers (radio). The geese work to these callers extremely well.

Very politically diverse views in this country with many people being against hunting - but farmers MUST shoot birds if they want to harvest their fields. Great trip for anyone interested in waterfowl hunting. Interestingly enough despite the strict regulations - if you are allowed to hunt a particular species in a given field - there are never any limits on how many birds can be harvested. Secondly - it is legal to sell geese for profit. Virtually all of our birds were sold to restaurants for about 3 euros each.

A couple pictures below: