Officials share goose hunt details

SANDPOINT — Forty-eight geese were harvested during goose hunts at City Beach during November, with the most geese harvested in the second week, Sandpoint officials said.

When hunts for February were originally permitted, they were designed to help combat a growing goose population at City Beach, which was accompanied by E. coli in the geese’s feces. At the time, city officials said they had previously tried everything possible to keep the birds away from the beach, from decoys to relocation.

"Everything that the city has done to try to mitigate the geese at the beach basically isn't working," Sandpoint Police Chief Corey Coon said at the time. "Talking with Idaho Fish & Game, the next logical step is to actually go ahead and approve a goose hunt as part of that management plan."

On average, between 250 and 300 Canada geese make the park their home, carpeting the grass and beach with fecal matter. Because of the large amount of goose poop, high levels of E. coli bacteria can concentrate in the waters near the park, city officials said.

Of the harvested geese three were banded, meaning they had been marked and relocated at some point. 

“A couple of years ago we did a banding measure where we would band them and relocate them,” Coon said. “We did that for a couple years to see if that would be successful and found just as many numbers coming back.”

As the geese were harvested, Coon said they would check for bands and report numbers back to Fish and Game units so that they could identify where the geese were relocated from. 

“It could be our location, or it could be another location,” he said. 

He also mentioned that 27 blinds were available during the hunts.  Of those 27 open spots, 15 groups showed up which meant 12 groups did not show.

Coon said one of the main goals of the hunts was to change the flight pattern of the geese, or the resting and nesting locations.

“When we talk about being successful, we don’t have a lot of data to show,” he said. “I’m in law enforcement, I’m not a goose biologist. But from my perspective, for the month of November I would say we’ve changed their flight behavior for November. Whether that’s going to have a long-term impact, I think it’s too short to tell.”

However, he said the city council plans to revisit the goose management plan in the next few months. At that time they will reevaluate the effectiveness of various methods they have attempted and discuss other measures that could discourage geese from flocking to City Beach throughout the year.