Thread: gooses

This exact same paddock this afternoon had 3-400 on it .....

I thought they got fairly hard hunted down your neck of the woods .
whats changed.the making them pests .
or was it further up the Waikato they got hammered.
pretty fruitless for us today I suspect the southerly of a day or ago has moved the big mob and rhey,l drift back in the next week or so.
the harvest stopping deads probably a factor to.
we had a good setup but no lookers of either target species cup a tea was good tho.

Yup they do ..... A lot of them by us hahaha. If they’re hunted properly (now is the time as there’s plenty of juveys that have never seen a decoy or flag) you can usually get a couple of decent hunts per mob but some mobs have been harassed so much they now won’t fly very far and choose to walk from the lake to the paddocks, so many more people chasing em makes it hard to wait for the right conditions to have a really big bomb up. Scouted same mob again this arvo and will hit em in the morning and probably afternoon if they choose not to fly early.
There are literally thousands of Canada’s in our small area and if they hadn’t taken them off the game bird list there wouldve been serious consequences for some farmers especially now with bugger all rain and grass for stock
If your ever up this way come kill a few for us ...

they didnt need to be taken off gamebird list to control numbers,the rules/limits/regulation COULD have been changed and geese keep the king of gamebird status.
shooting on ground or water to start with couldve upped the tally taken. 24hr hunting ....shooting from moving vechile/boat .
they were culled before the changes using centrefires or rimfires.......it just wasnt allowed to be done by general public.

Removing the king from his throne was the best thing that happened up here, it opened up a totally new season of wing shooting and allowed us to remove at least some of the population which otherwise would have had to have been culled using the aforementioned methods, which aren’t “sporting” and having participated in said culls as Joe Public they are not very effective in reducing numbers, semiautomatic fire from a helicopter is though!!! Canada’s are awesome birds to hunt but they are also highly destructive of crops and pasture, they take a lot of time watching and scouting to nail in big numbers and learn very quickly what a spread of decoys and grass covered blinds are, so if anyone wants to put in the mahi I can organise access to plenty of goose shit covered paddocks out my way

well they may be easy in your area but 180sq km of te waihora /lake ellesmere their ancestral SI home is a different challenge all together.one of their biggest hoochies on ellesmere is a private lagoon guarded religiously and beyond general access.
culling -ye pan exercise in fruitlessness on ellesmere -merely made the birds more bloody paranoid.Ive been gathering all sorts of reports re their location and behaviour ,and am tracking so together with the crew we know theyll be out and about when guts 'are empty !
patience is a virtue -waited 2yrs to nail those ones the other day.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

they didnt need to be taken off gamebird list to control numbers,the rules/limits/regulation COULD have been changed and geese keep the king of gamebird status.
shooting on ground or water to start with couldve upped the tally taken. 24hr hunting ....shooting from moving vechile/boat .
they were culled before the changes using centrefires or rimfires.......it just wasnt allowed to be done by general public.

after mellowing to the farmers plight and hunter inability at times to help
ive realised better communication and co ordination could have solved a lot of the mass events on farms .
farmers didn't like being told what to do on their own land with a species they didn't want or ask for and hunters thought their 100 buks a year entitled them to all the say
.now the way it is we both lose I think .
but maybe we can start over and sort it together.
f&g has to play a part to and put the game back into its name.
also not allowing them a place to where you cant get at them is a factor to.
but im piclkin the last few years of intence pressure has spread them to places they weren't before
tho whether they,d eventualy got there anyway is anyones guess.

They’re definitely not easy Kotuku hahaha many an early morning has resulted in nothing more than a lie down in the paddock, Your right about them following their guts, Geese are pretty simple when it comes to that side of things, food, water and grit are about the only things they need, find those locations and your odds of tipping a couple over increase greatly.
Report from the boys this morning 40 odd by 8.30am with the bro’s young fulla slaying his first with his new 20g they plan to wait em out for the day so hopefully they’ll fly this arvo or it’s gunna be a long stinking hot day in the blinds for them hahahaha

Question .... have you guys shooting the big water tried the goose kites?? We had a couple we used on lake Waikare a few years back, they seemed to attract them, along with flagging into range for a couple of shots.

Originally Posted by 2Quack

They’re definitely not easy Kotuku hahaha many an early morning has resulted in nothing more than a lie down in the paddock, Your right about them following their guts, Geese are pretty simple when it comes to that side of things, food, water and grit are about the only things they need, find those locations and your odds of tipping a couple over increase greatly.
Report from the boys this morning 40 odd by 8.30am with the bro’s young fulla slaying his first with his new 20g they plan to wait em out for the day so hopefully they’ll fly this arvo or it’s gunna be a long stinking hot day in the blinds for them hahahaha

nah never tried goose kites or flagging really.
mostly cos we,ve been on their flightlines or their grub runs.
tell the young fella 30 gram gamebore 3,s or fiochi 30 gram k2.s are deadly out of the 20 gauge 0ver paddocks.
you don't need 3 inch lead in the 20g
I figured that out pretty quick
but now you have no choice over water as 3 inch steel or trap steel is all you get..
at the lake now im using 28 gram blackcloud steel 2.s and they aint as good believe me.

two massive ineptly organised culls 1960s&2000s(both due to political desires to secure the cockies vote) on Ellesmere and in the lower southern alps resulted in mass slaughter on the eastern aside of SI and Inland.
TV3 anti the anti hunting lobby had a field day publicity wise.
Westcoast F&G made it quite clear they were not having a bar of it and if anyone wanted to try their luck well the sequel would be akin to having hells angels stay in a convent -It was not gonna be pretty .
One chopper pilot whom i m told discreetly offered his services was very quickly and discreetly told -take it off the table .6 geese deceased were found on lake hochstetter which was investigated very robustly with a clear view to prosecute but.no result ]
.my coast informant told me last week shes rife with em at present but again the cunning buggers will fly lake to lake -sometimes 10-20min flight and with big deep water theyve got all the bloody aces in the pack.poerua -lake brunner 20min by car -5-10 by goose.
I dont care anyhow -to me its the whole experience of getting out there trying to out guess them and if it all comes together some of the best meat id ever slide past me dentures.

GSPF- that last statement does not mean you can chuck a big old hoary gander in me coffin when im lyin in state in the garage with trusty escort by my side!!!

Good comments through this thread. Each area throughout NZ had its unique characteristics as far ad geese were concerned.
To me there were three key players that brought about the present situation.
1--DoC and greens twig n tweet wanted geese (and other introduced game birds) exterminated. Political leverage was always going to be used by these bigots.
2-- Federated farmers advocated for heavy culling due to crop and pasture damage, even though the damage was not nationwide.
3--- Fish and Game were being too coy because of pressure from one eyed hunters in whose eyes "the worlds greatest game bird" could do no wrong.
Of course, the bigots with the most pc and political correctness and clout took away any reasonabley equable chance of a managed solution.
Much more cooperation was and is required between f&g , hunters and farmers if a managed solution is to be found. Farmers were very bitter over the dirty dairying campaign even though it was justified, and supporting greens and DoC against f&g and hunters , LFO's was how the Federated farmers took their vengeance unfortunately.
Goose hunting including time, travel, equipment etc costs is expensive and requires dedication over the long term. Having land owners rwfuse access and having restrictive timetables and hunting rules in place did nothing to allow hunters to be more efficient.
Today, looking at the various parties in govt, doc and feds to become more reasonable is a distant dream, if the actions of this col are anything to go by; not that Nats could be proud of their record either.
Other issues like CHCH earthquake, Pike river mine, poverty and poisons keep getting more attention ay.

big properties tied up not allowing access has always been and will always be an issue to controlling numbers of ANY species......now if the current bunch of greenie govt clowns decided to reduce goose numbers along same lines as they wanted to do thar...lets say 30,000 only over whole country and mr such n such farmer has 200 on his effluent pond not allowed to access and another has 1000 on his coastal property he keeps for his mates...well the nuber left on cullable /public accessable land will be buggerall.

the last ellesmere debacle was just that .politicians of note kate wilkinson (nat min conservation
I saw her on Tv in an interview with one rob cope williams of CTV-no says kate were not removing them from F&Gcontrol ,farmers already have remedies they can use in pest control.
whoops what did she do?//David carter N at Min agriculture speaker of house well he gets together with Kate and whoa F&Glose control of geese and theres a $100K fund set up(read vote buying exercise as the election was iminent) to pay for this highly organised operation.

Not forgetting F&G never got a brass bloody razoo from tigharse govts for goose control.
Big meeting of all interested parties a so called plan agreed upon...............WTF-out of the blue ive got TV3 on the blower saying Ellesmere is awash with dead dying and crippled geese-subsequent video footage showed just that on national TV
a certain person went superballistic (hell remember ) and marched into DOC HQ in CHCH demanding some answers "-the authoriser had suddenly gone on leave.!!!!! "
amazingly he manged to secure a copy of the authorising order which I still have amongst my papers.

bugger me nek minute katey matey potatey is arsed out of conservation portfolio and a lot of soft shoe shuffle goes on as joe public starts enquiring as to who authorised this fuckup.

I had till recently a contact high up in DOC HQ in SI and i remember him saying how the after effects reverberated around SI DOC offices and the shifty gazes as key players attempted to down play the whole issue .
westcoast F&G went doggo refused to have anything to do with it .
another recent morsel on international news -the himalayan thar is almost extinct in its native himalayas and Nzs population is regarded as the only healthy one in the world. obviously noone knows about the mad cow conservation minister and DOCs ongoing efforts to cull them out of existence!
lets see -red deer ,wapiti,possums ,goats ,pigs wallabies ,-all have been subject of DOC ongoing extermination plans for years -but it appears it make fuck all difference -the animals quietly breed themselves back into big populations.hmmm whose the dumbass one might ask .I wont hold my breath.

That kate williamson was the same minister that signed off the infamous "food bill" which outlawed possum pies and farmers markets, food stalls at school fetes and roadside stalls; unless of course you paid a $500 application fee (non refundable) to MaF to sell approved food; and modt applications were refused. Stuffed a local famous tourist operation in sth westland too ! Lord help us !