In a field outside Lewes, six men in white Tyvek suits and caps lie on reclining chairs, surrounded by about 70 snow goose decoys that the hunters hope will lure live birds close enough to be shot.
Since dawn on an unseasonably warm February morning, the hunters have already shot around 20 birds, whose white carcasses lie amid the bobbing decoys. They are hoping to shoot more from the vast flocks that wheel around the southern Delaware sky during the winter months.
[audio:http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/TheGreen_03072014_SnowGeese.mp3|titles= Delaware Public Media News Director Tom Byrne's interview with Delaware Div. of Fish and Wildlife Director David Saveikis.]
The hunters don’t have to wait long, as a flock of approximately 1,500 birds drifts toward the decoys. An unlucky group of four or five comes within the guns’ range. They are shot out of the sky, and seized by an eager retriever.
The dead geese represent a satisfying haul for the hunters and their outfitter, Andy Dively, who said he “couldn’t be more pleased” with the number of birds shot that day.
But the day’s harvest, and that of similar expeditions, is dwarfed by the estimated 100,000 to 125,000 snow geese that usually winter in Delaware, a population that ravages farmlands, wetlands, and its own Arctic breeding grounds.
As many as 220,000 snow geese have been known to winter in Delaware, while the population in the whole of the Atlantic flyway is estimated at one million birds, according to the Delaware Division of Fish & Wildlife.
In an effort to reduce the impact of the geese, state officials have removed limits on the number that hunters can shoot, extended the hours when they can hunt, and allowed the use of electronic calls to attract the birds – all conditions that do not apply during the regular hunting season.
The division launched its Conservation Order, setting special conditions for hunting snow geese, in 2009, and this year said the order would apply from Feb. 1 until April 12, with a break over the weekend of Feb. 8 and 9.
Officials hope this year’s “harvest” will at least equal last year’s 9,965 birds, or perhaps a tenth of Delaware’s wintering total, which were brought in by 703 hunters, according to division data.
The order has succeeded in stabilizing the population, which was previously growing by 8 percent a year, according to David Saveikis, director of the division.
The order, together with the regular hunting season, has “somewhat” reduced the snow goose population, Saveikis told WDDE. “But it hasn’t met the goal of reducing it to a manageable level,” he said.
Officials are trying to reduce the population partly in order to prevent a crash in numbers that they fear will occur because of severe damage to the birds’ Arctic breeding grounds, Saveikis said.
But they also need to protect Delaware’s wetlands and farmlands from the over-abundant goose population, Saveikis said.
“Thousands of acres in Delaware are saltmarsh that has been negatively impacted by over-abundant snow geese,” he said. The damage reduces the marshes’ value as flood-control areas, and their ability to accommodate other wildlife, he said.
[caption id="attachment_27314" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Snow goose hunters on a recent outing take a break, surrounded by decoys and dead geese.(Click to enlarge)"]
On farmland, the geese cost farmers thousands of dollars in lost production by eating the roots of crops such as winter wheat or alfalfa.
“If you get a large flock of 5,000 snow geese on a winter wheat crop, they can have a significant impact,” Saveikis said.
A state survey from 1998-2001 estimated that snow geese damaged 11,000 acres of crops a year, mostly wheat, barley and rye, costing farmers $345,000 annually.
At Green Acres Farm about five miles west of Lewes, manager Burli Hopkins estimated that goose-related damage to his barley crop alone has been as high as $24,000 a year, about the same as losses to his alfalfa crop, which is reduced by 40-50 percent by the birds’ consumption.
In an effort to stem the losses, Hopkins now plants oats rather than barley as a “cover crop” in the fall. The geese are “a major problem,” he said, as a flock of the birds carpeted an area of alfalfa field within sight of his office.
Hopkins and his staff chase the geese off whenever they can, have tried firecrackers to scare them, and encourage hunters like Andy Dively and his clients to shoot them.
Although the hunters barely make a dent in the population, their presence is welcome on the 1,000-acre dairy farm because they at least disturb the geese and deter them from eating crops, Hopkins said. “It was way worse before the hunters,” he said.
Hopkins welcomes professional hunters like Dively – who pays rent to hunt on Hopkins’s land -- but won’t tolerate private individuals, whom he called “bushwackers,” who take shots at geese on his land but end up having no appreciable effect on the population.
Given the overwhelming numbers of geese that visit his farm every winter, Hopkins said he has accepted that there’s only so much he can do to control them. That’s why he doesn’t try to remove them from less-valuable areas of the farm. “They can have the stubble,” he said. “We have to give them something.”
For hunters like John Sojka, Delaware’s abundance of snow geese represents a change from targets like Canada geese in his native Connecticut, and offers an opportunity to make new kinds of sausage, salami and jerky.
“We’ll clean them here, seal them up, and then they will be ready to be made into something when we get home,” said Sojka, 54, whose group of four paid $1,500 for a two-day hunt.
Ed Malley, another hunter from Suffield, Connecticut, said he had “mutilated” one bird by shooting it too close, but for those killed more cleanly, he would take them home and grill the breast, medium-rare.
For many hunters, snow geese represent a special challenge because they are, despite their numbers and relatively large size, hard to shoot, said Nathan Walters, the official guide for Dively’s party. Walters, 20, a student of criminal justice at Penn State University, said the geese are very wary of possible threats, and will follow any individual bird that flies away from a hunting party.
“All it takes is one to veer off,” he said. “Snow geese are more rewarding because they are so challenging.”
Adding to the challenges are bald eagles, which prey on the geese and disturb flocks that are being pursued by hunters.
“The bald eagle is out there snow goose hunting, just like we are,” said Dively. “The eagles follow the snow goose migration and make it more difficult to hunt.”
Asked whether many other outfitters like his help to keep snow goose numbers down, Dively said he knew of only two in Delaware besides his own company, ANA Outdoors, based in Frankford. He said new entrants might be deterred by the cost of decoys, chairs and electronic callers, which in his case cost a total of about $15,000.
And anyone hunting snow geese for the first time will quickly discover that most of them get away, said Sojka. Out of the morning’s flock of 1,500, “we shot four and educated 1,496 of them,” he said.