Goose hunting smack down proposal.

[hdshot]

Never thought the goose season could get the possibility of the hammer like this?!  Is this right?

https://www.wildfowlmag.com/editorial/proposed-changes-for-2025-26-pnw-goose-season/516777

Cackling Canada goose numbers “tanked,”

“GMAs 4 and 5, or Eastern Washington, will see a daily Canada bag limit reduction also from four (4) to three (3).”

“goose hunting days from a MAXIMUM of 107 days to a MAXIMUM of 74 days.”

“If cackler numbers continue to decline to a point where consumptive harvest is no longer acceptable, then there is the chance that there will be NO goose season”

[metlhead]

Meh. We'll still mow through em

[hdshot]

Meh. We'll still mow through em

Sounds like no cackling geese to mow through is the problem.  We will see but looking grim and might not be interesting to watch?

[206]

Poor guides

[metlhead]

No cacklers except the many thousands at the coast, Chehalis valley, Puyallup valley, mouth of Chambers Creek, Nisqually valley, Willamette valley, Ridgefield, Sauvie, Tillamook.....
 Could keep going but too busy mowing

[bobcat]

The goose hunting I did this past season in the Chehalis area we didn't see any cacklers at all, that I can recall. It was weird. Last year and every other previous year there's always been plenty.

[metlhead]

Mucho birds. They'd roll off Malone ponds en masse. Elma birds would come east to Porter area. Adna and Galvin birds hunkered. Only change I noticed was lack of early season traveling birds roosting on the Grand Mounds pits. Musta got a new spot

[full choke]

The proposal also looks to reduce days and bag limits for westside units as well. Stopping the late season permit unit hunts, reduction of days, drop to 2 birds daily in permit zone, 3 birds in rest of westside.

[pianoman9701]

Here on the SW corner, the USFWS has had us afraid to shoot anything larger than a cack because of duskys, a species of Canada that would've gone extinct only because of Mother nature. Now, we have a cack problem. But is it really hunter harvest that's the culprit? How about the huge and ever-increasing numbers of other migratory birds like snows (especially), sandhills, swans, and other species of Canadas. How about increasing harvest on the snows, let us kill a few sandhills and swans, and take duskys off the protected list?

[Stein]

Here on the SW corner, the USFWS has had us afraid to shoot anything larger than a cack because of duskys, a species of Canada that would've gone extinct only because of Mother nature. Now, we have a cack problem. But is it really hunter harvest that's the culprit? How about the huge and ever-increasing numbers of other migratory birds like snows (especially), sandhills, swans, and other species of Canadas. How about increasing harvest on the snows, let us kill a few sandhills and swans, and take duskys off the protected list?

They are actually reducing the snow goose limit as well.

[metlhead]

Decreasing the limits will really cause the harvest to drop significantly. A number of groups won't bother the effort for a reduced bag. Birds will still be shot, mostly incidental. Seems more an effort to reduce opportunity that to conserve a population. Excuses.

[Klickitatsteelie]

The thing that gets me with this as growing up in goose zone 5 my whole life and hunting geese for 25 years we never use to have cacklers here. We had tons of honkers and some true lessers. Now we are over run with cacklers, thousands upon thousands of them. So to say they are declining just blows my mind because that’s sure not the case here.

[ASHQUACK]

Was in area 2 "coastal" yesterday and you couldn't convince that there's a shortage of "cackling" geese. The fields were absolutely ram packed full of them. And a few thousand red breasted Canada's as well.

[metlhead]

Counts on breeding grounds were in May. Wonder if bios waited till June to get a more accurate count? Maybe some flocks have discovered new breeding areas. The climate is changing, remember

[hdshot]

Decreasing the limits will really cause the harvest to drop significantly. A number of groups won't bother the effort for a reduced bag. Birds will still be shot, mostly incidental. Seems more an effort to reduce opportunity that to conserve a population. Excuses.

My problem is very few birds in the air, areas developed, and over hunted for general public lands most hunters only have access with parking.  Hunters get very few to no days of limit hunting and they still pile up at the entrance several hours before legal entrance time.  People even pay to hunt shoulder to shoulder in some of these public areas with many days of poor hunting.