David Sikes

MANY of you reluctantly put away your guns this time of year.
   If you're not a quail hunter, whether by choice or for economic reasons, there's traditionally not been much to hunt in South Texas in February.
   Thankfully, fishing has begun to pick up as water temperatures rise. And I'll be covering this as it develops.
   But for those sportsmen unwilling to mothball their shotguns just yet, a few good weeks of the special snow goose season remain.
   I've decided to soften my attempts at rallying you into the field with lofty ideals about conserving the Arctic snow goose habitat. For the past two years, I've tried - along with many outdoors writers and biologists - calling hunters to arms in the fight against a snow goose population explosion.
   Maybe this shouldn't be our primary reason to go hunting. Instead, go because it's fun at a bargain price. Some outfitters have lowered their fee to less than $100 for several guns during the special season.
   Goose populations

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   The purpose of the special season is to diminish the burgeoning snow goose population.
  Biologists point to an environmental crisis brewing in Canada, where millions of mid-continent light geese continue to destroy their winter home, leaving barren tundra where green nesting grounds once flourished.
   Few disagree that the goose population is headed for a crash.
   There is, however, disagreement on what should be done to stop it. Some people wonder whether this is a manageable crisis, while others aren't sure if it's genuine. And still others believe that man's efforts are misguided, useless and rooted in arrogance.
   Cyclical pattern
   Longtime goose hunting guide Clifton Tyler, a calm voice of reason, gave me his perspective on the situation while we were lying in a rice field a couple of weeks ago.
   Tyler believes the overpopulation problem is nothing new. He said the current situation is the inevitable consequence of a recurring cycle.
   Tyler, and I'm sure other area waterfowlers, can recall periodic population spikes and dips since the 1950s. Tyler remembers a particularly substantial die-off during the 1960s, back when such received little media attention.
   Tyler said thousands of waterfowl, mostly geese, died in the Eagle Lake area alone. How could he forget the pitchforks and mass burnings of geese that had been killed by avian cholera, the result of too many birds drinking water tainted by their own feces?
   Hunting suffered a slump before the birds rebounded.
   The big picture
   Dave Morrison, Texas Parks and Wildlife waterfowl program leader, does not dispute what Tyler witnessed.
   But he downplays its significance to the big picture.
   Morrison said isolated die-offs occur regularly, where as many as 5,000 to 10,000 birds die in a specific region. Such natural events have had little impact on the overall population of mid-continent geese, which has grown steadily during the past 30 years.
   In 1968-69, mid-continent light geese numbered about 750,000, according to TPW records. Today, that number nears 3 million.
   That's not supposed to happen.
   Annual harvest counts for the United States from the 1960s hovered around 400,000 to 500,000, Morrison said. Today hunters nationwide bag about 1.4 million snow geese annually in recent years.
   Yes, hunters have made a dent in the population. Is it enough? Morrison said it's too early to tell.
   "I think it's helping in some respects," Morrison said. "If gone unchecked, I believe it would be that much worse."
   We saw a dip in last year's snow goose hatch, which could be a positive trend. Ironically, the resulting dip in young birds boosted the average intelligence level of mid-continent flocks, putting fewer birds on hunters' straps.
   Young birds respond better to decoys and are much easier to call into shotgun range, either by traditional means or by electronic callers made legal during the special snow goose season. Unplugged shotguns also are allowed during this extended season.
   More poor hatches are expected in the coming years. In part, that's because it could be decades before the Arctic tundra recovers.
   We might as well bag a few geese while we can. That's my new attitude on the situation.