Behind the Badge - The Blue Specklebelly Canada Goose
The Blue Specklebelly Canada Goose
District Game Warden Greg Hastings
The North Dakota Spring Light Goose Conservation Order is set in place to harvest overpopulated light geese, which are snow geese (white and blue phase) and Ross’s geese.
This season starts in February and ends in May with no daily or possession limits on light geese.
Now as the years have gone on, I have come to the conclusion this hunt seems to be more of a young hunter’s sport as the fields are usually covered in mud and the wetlands still have layers of ice on them when the birds are migrating through.
For the hunters who do venture out for this hunt, they can have great success if they are in the right place at the right time.
A few years back during this spring light goose order I was patrolling in my district when I noticed a vehicle parked near a public hunting area.
Now I didn’t see any hunters around, but with the vehicle there they had to be close by.
On the public land, thousands of Canada geese and specklebelly geese (greater white-fronted geese) were seen resting on a half-frozen wetland.
There were so many geese in the area making noise it was deafening, but not a single snow goose was seen.
This was concerning to me as what were these hunters hunting if there weren’t any snow geese? After a short period of time the geese on the wetland erupted into flight with multiple gun shots ringing out.
As the thousands of geese were flying away, I watched multiple Canada geese and specklebelly geese fall into the water and ice on the wetland.
Soon after, a man was walking in the ice water picking up these geese.
So, with the apparent violations that just occurred in my presence I needed to go address the situation.
I walked into the area and confronted the man I saw picking up the geese.
It ended up he was hunting alone and was very exhausted and out of breath when I made it to his location.
He had just spent numerous minutes in ice cold water without waders collecting the geese he shot.
The hunter was so proud of himself thinking he had just harvested a large number of blue geese.
When I broke the news to him that he didn’t have a single blue goose it was like he saw a ghost.
Now part of how he looked could have been because he was messing with hypothermia by just collecting the birds.
I helped the hunter carry the geese back to our vehicles where I then made him get in his truck with the heater going while I figured out what to do next.
It was apparent the hunter had no idea what a blue goose really was, but ignorance does not fix everything.
At the end of the day, I was as lenient as I could be on the hunter, but he went home with no geese and a couple citations.
I still run into this hunter every once in a while, and we get a good chuckle about what a real blue goose looks like.
So, no matter what the season is make sure you know what you are hunting because you never know when the local game warden might be in the area.