The MNR seems like a crack in a toilet seat—it will pinch you every chance it has
To the Expositor:
I have tried to follow the Green Bay goose fiasco for months now. At first it seemed to be about disturbance of crops and loss of serious income. Lately the discussion seems to be about shooting from a road. It seems too bad that the process has gotten so far off track.
It is condemned in about three quarters of Ontario to hunt from roads. My wife and I stopped our truck near Gowganda while a hunter shoots a goose with a crossbow. I was encouraged at least once to take my gun out of its case because “you have over 60 miles of hunting yet.”
Would it ever be nice for once to read where an issue was resolved? I saw my first baby goose 25 years ago on Manitoulin. Since then we have been developing our own Ontario geese.
Most of the geese we have are not the high flyers that fly from the south in April and nest in the arctic and then fly south in September. They sometimes come down for a meal and then fly on.
Most of the geese we have are Ontario geese that cannot be classified as migratory any more. Most of the geese we have on Manitoulin Island now are renegade opportunist that nest her and love here except for a little over three months that they spend in Southern Ontario.
Last year my neighbour estimated that maybe 300 was in my field at one time. They were eating some of the little plants and pulling some out and tramping the rest in the mud (it was a wet fall.)
I drove in a 20-acre field one day on the tractor, nine different flocks of geese flew out of the field. There where some cows in the field but the geese ate more grass that day than the cows.
About six years ago, 13 geese were coming into a field that had just been planted. It had just rained and the geese where eating the little plants and tramping some into the mud. One day 12 of them left in a hurry. They never returned. Maybe coming down hard on one will set a precedent. That seems to be the way our Ontario law is played out. It doesn’t work with humans, but it might work with geese.
I cooked a goose once. Nobody would eat it. I ate it. It took me five days. I wouldn’t do that again because our Manitoulin geese spend time in the winter on race tracks, golf courses and large lawns and they may have so much pesticide in them they may not be safe.
There really isn’t much a farmer can do to protect his crops and his income from wildlife. I think the MNR is a lot like a crack in a toilet seat. It will pinch you every chance it has, but nothing seems to get resolved.
Thank you for the space,
Ed Burt
Kagawong
