Earth

Snow Geese are so interesting, and the whole situation with them is fucked.

For those not in the know, their population was declining (like many migratory waterfowl) due to over-hunting and habitat loss. Then, thanks to large-scale industrial agriculture, their population basically exploded by +300% in the mid-late 20th century, and continues to grow by roughly 5% per year. As you can imagine, this is an ecological nightmare for habitat (especially in their Arctic breeding range) and other wildlife.

Some of you — even the most anti-hunting among us — might ask, “If the damage is so great, why don’t we hunt them?” Well, we do, but here’s the thing. Snow Geese are surprisingly smart, congregate and migrate in massive flocks, and live 20-25 years, making them notably difficult to hunt.

Basically the only way to hunt them is in a field with decoys. Because they’re so smart, they learn real quick what a decoy spread looks like, and — even if only a small number of individuals in a given flock is wary of landing in a decoy spread — it only takes a few individuals to convince a massive flock not to land in a given field.

It therefore takes an absolute fuck ton of decoys — literally THOUSANDS — to put together an adequately attractive spread. Even then, it’s not as simple as just putting decoys in a field, it takes an experienced hunter to know how to arrange them in a natural, realistic, attractive way. Setup can take a couple hours easy, and the logistics of transporting and storing all of that gear is also a drag. That doesn’t take into account the hundreds of miles of driving and scouting locations and getting permission from landowners and blah blah blah.

As you can guess, the pool of people with the time, money, resources, and experience is relatively shallow. Further, it’s incredibly cost prohibitive and a prohibitively intimidating an undertaking, so, few people really get into Snow Goose hunting.

Many state and national governments try to sweeten the pot for the most psycho killers among the hunting contingent by declaring no-limit hunting — KILL EM ALL — which surely convinces a few people, but…

Snow Geese taste… not great, and takes a competent cook (read: someone who doesn’t overcook) to make delicious. When a party of ten shoots 20+ birds apiece, you’ve got a matter of disposal. Fortunately, many outfits donate birds that are processed into sausage or jerky to food shelves and the like. Still, some people just bury or burn the geese they shoot.

One lovely thing about Snow Geese is that they massively fuck up crops. Any animal hated by large scale commercial agriculture is a comrade of mine. Sure would be nice if they could stop making so many babies and fucking up the tundra though.

This has been your weekly unsolicited info dump brought to you by your resident autistic gnome.