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Allow me to paint a familiar scene. You’re sitting in traffic, wondering why a car several places before you is stopped at a green light. After a few minutes of waiting, you finally spot the cause of the holdup.
A gaggle of Canada geese.
The group is meandering across the street, devoid of the type of urgency a squirrel (or any other animal) would possess if face-to-face with a massive vehicle.
I saw a number of these goose-related jams near my college, situated along Boston’s nature-filled Emerald Necklace. The grand birds added to the beautiful tapestry along Park Drive and the Fenway — but when they weren’t resting or leisurely crossing the road, they’d chase students, even going beak-to-toe with a few. Discussing these chases (and occasional attacks) would eventually lead to an offhand mention of the fact you can legally hunt Canada geese in Massachusetts. But the details around how — and why — never seemed to be clear. (I suppose I didn’t need to know how, since I wasn’t planning to hunt any of Boston’s geese. But the “why” remained in my mind.)
Well, it so happens that this week marks the start of the state’s Canada goose hunting season. So there’s perhaps no better time to learn.
I recently spoke with David Scarpitti, a wildlife biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. He broke down the facts on goose hunting in our state — and what to remember as the season begins.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Hanna Ali: Why are Canada geese fair game? Are they overpopulated?
David Scarpitti: So, there’s a long, long tradition of waterfowl hunting in Massachusetts and really all across the East Coast and Northeast.
In the fall, waterfowl gather in various marshes and habitats across the state, and then shuffle their way south as winter approaches. We see that — depending on the species — anywhere from September to October and even into November. And with that migration, historically, there was all sorts of market hunting occurring. People were harvesting birds to consume, and that’s still the case now. It’s not done on a commercial basis, but people are still harvesting these animals during hunting seasons and consuming them all the same.
With geese, it’s kind of tricky and interesting.
There are two subsets of geese. First, the traditional migratory birds that nest and do all their business way up in Canada and the Arctic Circle. Those are the ones that migrate through in the fall. They’re a little bit different from the geese that we see all the time in Massachusetts. They’re the same species, but the ones we see are an artifact of those old market hunting days when folks would use live decoys to lure birds in. Over time, many of those birds escaped and now exist here in the wild, but they lack that migratory behavior because they never learned it as young animals.
These birds are very, very abundant. And that’s why we have a few different hunting seasons that are meant to address overabundance of those resident birds, particularly in areas of Massachusetts where they can be really kind of problematic for people.
HA: How many people file for a license to hunt geese each year?
DS: So last year, there were 7,894 waterfowl stamps sold in Massachusetts for residents and 1,400 for non-residents. So it’s not a huge amount. Comparatively, we sell upwards of 16,000 to 17,000 turkey permits and 50,000 to 60,000 deer hunting licenses.
Waterfowl hunting is definitely more of a niche activity. It’s nowhere near as popular as it was 20, 30 or even 40 years ago when it was one of the more common things people hunted. And they’re big birds, they come in big groups, so there are large bag limits [15 birds per day, per person] to control some of these resident populations. Most people just harvest a few, one or three to four.
HA: Do people hunt more in western, eastern or central Massachusetts or on the Cape and Islands?
Field Guide to Boston: Discover — and rediscover — your Boston.[/keyfigures]
DS: It’s all opportunity and where people have the ability to hunt.
Now, there’s definitely more birds in eastern Massachusetts, particularly in the northeast and the southeast parts of the state. But you have a lot of people and buildings, infrastructure and things in the way that prevent legal hunting in those kinds of areas.
As you go further west, there’s tons of opportunity to hunt but less abundance — we don’t see quite as many birds and that’s just because the habitats are different there. There’s more forests, and geese [prefer] feeding in fields. But certainly, up and down the Connecticut River Valley, there’s a lot of geese and a lot of hunting there.
I’d say we probably see the most hunting in the central portion of the state, like Worcester County, where there’s like a perfect mix of areas [for hunting] and still relatively high numbers of birds to hunt.
HA: What should people in these regions keep in mind as the season begins?
DS: There can be a lot of shooting, and in Massachusetts, when you hear a lot of shooting, people’s ears perk up and they think, “What the heck is going on.” But it’s nothing illegal. It’s just goose hunting. People might be surprised to hear a bunch of gunshots fairly early on a September morning around their ponds or lakes or marshes. But again, it’s just totally normal. We’ve had a September goose season for decades now. And these hunters are very competent and capable.
P.S. — Is hunting the only answer? The city of Bristol, Connecticut looked at a few nonlethal ways to control its goose population earlier this year. Meanwhile, Boston and other communities have tried to use border collies to ward geese off of their public green spaces.
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