Photo by Lee Leschper

It is hard to imagine that 40 years ago the only honk to be heard over the entire state of Minnesota either came from the horn of a car or one of those annoying circus clowns. Now, the latest estimate by the Department of Natural Resources puts Minnesota's Canada goose count at 338,000 birds, which is nothing to clown around about.

"That is simply amazing," is the response given by most everybody you speak with, whether they are a waterfowl hunter or not. Chip Leer is president of Fishing the WildSide, and he spends a lot of time on the water, though he is also an avid hunter. Once he picked his jaw up off the ground and thought about it some more, he said he could see why the population is so high in our state these days. "We've seen them nesting in areas around Leech Lake, and that's something I can't ever remember seeing," he said.

Delta Waterfowl is well known as being a conservation organization that works hard to preserve waterfowl populations. John Devney is the senior vice president of the organization, and he said the progress of geese throughout the country is impressive. He grew up near White Bear Lake north of the Twin Cities and has watched Canada geese go from a species with a prohibition on hunting when he was a child to the September season when he was in college, and now to the point where they are abundant.

People all around Minnesota have seen the range of the Canadas expand, especially during the last five years. The population has risen to the point where farmers in the west-central and southwestern regions of our state and residents of the Twin Cities metro area consider flocks of geese to be a nuisance rather than a welcome sign.

The city folks aren't happy because a suburban lawn that's had 100 geese on it for several hours is pretty grotesque. Farmers, on the other hand, are losing valuable crops when the geese spend their flightless time feeding on the fields.

"I've seen firsthand what a family of Canadas can do to a new stand of barley, and it is pretty devastating," Devney said.

Waterfowl hunters throughout Minnesota are not going to complain very loudly, however. They are too busy grinning about the fact that more geese were killed in Minnesota last year than any other state in the country. Yes, that is true, and it has been the case for several years.

POPULATION STEADY
A resident population of 338,000 birds from the spring counts seems like an incredible number, but it is actually down a little from the same count in 2004.

"It's down from last year but if you look at the trend for the last five years, the trend is increasing -- we still have plenty of geese," said Steve Maxson, goose specialist for the DNR's Wetland Wildlife Population and Research Group.

Maxson said his estimates for the 2005 season are that production will be average to above average and that hunters will have a lot of opportunities from the opening of the early September hunt all the way through the end of the December hunt.

"You can find geese in just about any part of Minnesota, which is impressive considering they weren't even around a few decades ago," he said.

The success story geese have had in Minnesota is due largely to the fact that the species is so adaptable to a variety of conditions and seems to be willing to live alongside humans.

"They seem to thrive in areas with large human impact such as on golf courses and farm fields with ponds nearby," Maxson said.