mi': ir}5',':-, T'l E. R.AFLY OF THE U N IVER.SITY Of ILLINOIS NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY. I state of Illinois Dwi^^ht H. Green, Governor Department of Registration and Education Frank G. Thompson, Director PRELIMIKARY REPORT ON THE CaIJADA GF.ESE OP THE MISSISSIPPI FLYV/AY Harold C. Hanson and Robert H. Smith Published by Authority of the State of Illinoi; Natural History Survey Harlov; B. Kills, Chief Biological Notes No. 18 Urbana, Illinois September, 1947 FRELIMIIIARY R^£ ORT ON THE CANADA G^^ESE OF THE MISSISSIPPI FLYWAY Harold C. Hanson and Robert H. Smith-;} That the sound management of waterfowl and other v/ildlife species must in the last analysis rely on carefully gathered scientific data is axiomatic. Because the range of most waterfowl species is immense, and because some popula- tions shift their distribution within a flyway from year to year as a result of changing food, water, and weather condi- tions, adequate scientific data from all parts of the range are difficult to secure. The present paper on the Canada geese of the 'lissis- sippi Plyway is a preliminary report of a study that represents combined efforts and support of six agencies: the Natural His- tory Survey Division of the Illinois State Department of Registra- tion and Education; the U. S. Fish and Vvildlife Service; the Illinois State Department of Conservation; the Lands, Parks, and Forests Branch of the Canadian Department of I'mes and Resources; the Jack laner Iligratory Bird Foundation, Inc.; and the Arctic Institute of North America, Biologists of these agencies have studied the Canada goose of the Mississippi Flyway at most of its important con- centration points from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. An -::- Harold C. Hanson, Assistant Caiue Specialist, Illi- nois "atural History Survey; Robert H. Smith, Plyway Biologist, U. S. Fish and V/ildlife Service. - 3 - intensive study and banding program has been carried out at the important wintering area centering on Horseshoe Lake, Alex- ander County, in southern Illinois, where the Illinois State Department of Conservation maintains a game refuge. Because printing difficulties and a shortage of suit- able paper give promise of further delays in publishing the final report on the study, the present preliminary report is issued at this time. Issuance of this report now will make possible the inclusion in the final report of data and infor- mation derived from an additional year of study. Status of Mississippi Flyway Geese In 1946, 14 states of the Mississippi Flyway (Michigan, Wisconsin, "innesota, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, I'Centucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisi- ana) were closed to the hunting of Canada geese. The closed season of an entire flyv/ay was the first of its kind in the his- tory of this species of waterfowl. The only similar actions were those closing the shooting seasons on snow geese and brant in the Atlantic Coast states. Snow goose hunting has been pro- hibited there since 1931, and brant hunting for 9 of the 15 years since 1933. Closing the season on Canada geese in the I'ississippi Flyway was necessary for a number of reasons: a rapid decrease in the number of these geese in the flyway from 144,843 in 1940 - 4 - I to 72,770 in 1945; increased kills beginning in 1939, partic- ularly in the region of Horseshoe Lake; a disproportionate kill of juvenile birds and an apparent decreased productivity in 1945, as Indicated by research at Horseshoe Lake. Tables 1, 2, and 3 present detailed figures on this situation. The number of geese wintering at Horseshoe Lake dropped from about 50,000 in 1943-44 to 26,000 in 1945-46. That this decrease represented a real decrease in the flyway population and was not due to by-passing of the area by flocks is shown not only by flyway censuses but by baid recovery records; these records indicate that since 1932 many of the geese that formerly used the Ti ssissippi from Cairo, Illinois, to Baton Rouge, Louisi- ana, have concentrated in a m.uch smaller area centering on Horse- shoe Lake, because of the refuge there and the large ainount of grain made available to them. Calculated total kill figures indicate that in each of the recent hunting seasons betv/een 23 and 46 per cent of the available Canada goose population in the Mississippi Flyway was shot. In view of the knov/n relatively low productivity potential of the Canada goose, it was obvious that the birds could not stand a hi^ h kill. Recent population declines in the Mississippi Flyway showed that flock mortality from all causes combined had been excessive, and, as hunting losses are one type of mortality that can be controlled, it was evident that closing the flyway to shooting was the most effective management measure that could have been employed. Evidence of increased shooting pressure on Canada geese in recent years is shown by lowered survival rates, as computed from band recoveries by hunters; these recoveries are from geese banded at the Jack Miner bird Sanctuary, Kings- ville, Ontario, and the Eorseshoe Lake Game Refuge, maintained by the Illinois State Department of Conservation. Banding data on Horseshoe Lake geese show that the survival rates of the flock wintering there are below the averages for other popula- tions in the flyv/ay. Contributing to the recent heavy kill of birds in the Horseshoe Lake area was an apparent alteration in the habits of the geese wintering there. In recent years the birds have lacked the wariness usual in the Canada goose. Althou£;h this goose possesses a natural wariness that has given it a high survival rate under primitive conditions, individuals appear unable to solve problems of self-preservation that arise in a greatly modified environment such as that at Horseshoe Lake. During recent hunting seasons there, the geese exhibited an almost complete disregard of gunfire, flying back day after day to fields that were heavily shot. .... I Calculations based on the survival series obtained ■ \ for the Horseshoe Lake flock indicate that only 12 per cent of j the juveniles lived long enough to raise a brood of young. When a major portion of the annual kill of a Canada goose flock is at the expense of one age group, data on the - 6 - total number of birds bagged do not reveal the true impact of , the kill upon the future reproductive capacity of the population. At Horseshoe Lake the juveniles made up the major part of the kill from the time this study began in 1940 until shooting of the Canada goose v;as stopped in the I'ississippi Flyway at the end of the 1945 season, table 3. A year of low productivity in Canada geese should be of particular concern to the administrators who regulate the kill by hunters, for the reason that the young birds bear a double responsibility. Being more vulnerable to shooting than the adi'lts, they must contribute a disproportionate share of the kill, and, secondly, they must survive in sufficient num- bers to reproduce an equivalent of the annual loss in yearlings and the breeding population. Even in a year v/hen the production of young was not significantly low, 1943, shooting losses in the Horseshoe Lake area were so severe and so greatly at the expense of the juveniles that only a small proportion of this generation survived to reach the minimum breeding age of 2 years. Management V.fhat can be done to insure the future ol the Ilissis- sippi I'lyway geese? Until recent years, the two prime measures for conserving waterfov/l (refuges and hunting regulations) have - 7 - usually been fairly successful in the management 6f this group. \7ith the population of geese dealt with in this report, it is apparent that since 1939 these measures as applied have not been very effective. There is little that can be done to limit the kill of geese in Canada, because much of it is virtually necessary for the survival of the native Indians. In 1944 and 1945, when season limits were imposed for Alexander County, it vi?as a relatively easy matter to limit the kill of geese in the Horseshoe Lake area to a predetermined fig- ure, due to the facility with which the day-to-day kill could be tallied. The season bag limit in the above instances was determined by the trend of the population in prior years, but, to be fully effective, management should anticipate future trends based upon the current composition of the population. V.'ith the data at hand on the Canada goose in the I"!ississippi Flyv/ay, it is possible to arrive at a practical estimate of the maximiam kill that can be tolerated. Since the fall flicht in any year depends to a large extent on the production of young in the spring of that year, to predict the flock population v/-.th reasonable accuracy, it is necessary to know the trends in numbers of breeding females and to have some measure of the nesting success on the breeding grounds. Inventory on the latter is not easy because of the nature of the terrain, but the use of planes aids tremendously in such \vork. For the present, and until more data are available, - 8 - the average productivity of the flyv;ay population mi :ht be cal- culated on the basis of four young (brou/::,ht to flying stage) per adult female. If the flock population has been fairly stable for several years, a 10 per cent kill in the Horseshoe Lake area might prove to be within the limits of what the flock could stand without decreasing in size. Even this kill might be too high if kills north of riorseshoe Lake were unusually large in a given autumn, if nesting success was low the previous spring, or if sex and age ratios v/ere seriously unbalanced. The kill of a single bird, hov/ever, when the population is very lov; con- stitutes overshooting. A reduction in the crippling loss would increase the permissible retrieved kill in the riorseshoe Lake area. The nu!iiber of geese crippled and lost to hunters each year in the area is needlessly high. An estimate of cripples not retrieved, and later dying, is placed at 30 per cent of the retrieved kill. Certain administrative measures can be taken to reduce the per cent of cripples not retrieved, but the larger share of the re- sponsibility rests v/ith the hunter himself, who must restrain the natural desire to "give a high one a ride." Greater spacing of pits to reduce competition among hunters mi:ht aid in re- ducing crippling losses. Kany hunters hope to bag geese with greater ease by using magnum shotguns. However, it is debatable whether more geese are bagged than crippled by such guns because of the out-of -range shooting their possession encourages. - 9 - The hunting restrictions most frequently used to re- duce game kill to the desired level are simply a reduction in the length of the season or a further limitation of the bag. 1| A study of kill and of hunting regulations in the Horseshoe Lake area shows that hunting restrictions were not always suc- cessful in reducing the kill to the desired extent, but, if various measures instituted to lower the annual kill had not been taken, it is probable that a large proportion of the Canada geese using the Horseshoe Lake area would have been shot by the end of 1946. It is clear that the goose kill at Horse- shoe Lake needed to be restricted in a drastic manner, because the flock had lost so much of its natural wariness and become so vulnerable to hunting. In 1945, for example, there were only 5 half days of shooting, but the kill was, nevertheless, 5,200 bagged, another 800 to 1,000 crippled, plus lesser losses from miscellaneous causes. Pirnie (1939) has emphasized that "Changing habits of these birds (geese) may create new hazards for them and require even more stringent regulations." The behavior of the Horseshoe Lake flock in recent years and its relation to shooting have already been discussed, but it should again be emphasized that restrictions alone cannot be expected to safeguard it. Refuges form an important part of our system for the preservation of waterfowl, '.whether or not any individual refuge proves of value will depend to a certain extent upon its manage- ment and also upon its size. Leopold (1931) stated the chief - 10 - problem in regard to the Horseshoe Lake Game Refuge soon after this refuge was created. "The question of whether public refuges should be surrounded by public shooting grounds is frequently debated. Horseshoe Lake in Alexander County, Illinois, is a good place to study the question." The present food resources of the Horseshoe Lake Game T'efuge are insufficient to winter more than 10,000 geese, and probably only 5,000 can be accommodated to best advantage. V/hen the corn crop and wheat browse on the refuge are exhausted, and occasionally before this occurs, the flock feeds on unhar- vested and sometimes standing grain in the surrounding country- side — occasionally at a considerable loss to farmers who do not rent their fields to hunters. The breakdown in wariness i"hat has occurred is per- haps more serious to the future of the Horseshoe Lake flock than the reduction of its siz-e. It is believed that the steps necessary to reestablish wildness in the flock are (1) estab- lish refuge areas on nearby islands and bars of the Mississippi River or on lands adjacent to the river; (2) disperse the geese from Horseshoe Lake to these bars and islands, i. e., drive them back to their original habitat; (3) insofar as possible, reduce contact between humans and the geese. In past years v/hen the geese used the river bars they retained their natural wildness; coincident with their almost complete dependence on the refuge for food and grit, they lost - 11 - much of their wildness. The river refuges should be the roost- ing areas for the flock, and ideally they should contain the bulk of the birds at most times. Canada geese v/ill readily feed by ni^;ht, at daybreak, cr at dusk, if disturbed by day. This fact may offer a partial solution to the Horseshoe Lake problem. If the geese were per- mitted to feed at the Horseshoe Lake Refuge only during the hoxirj of dawn and dusk, the reestablishmcnt of wildness might occur and v.'ith it a reduction in the rate of kill. \7e have a precedent for such a course of action in the operation of the T'iner Sanc- tuary, v/here the geese feed only in the early morning hours and at dusk, spending the remainder of their time roosting on Lake Erie. State regulations in recent years have prohibited the placing of shooting pits v/ithin 75 to 150 yards of the boundary of the Horseshoe Lake Refuge. This buffer zone, which is in- tended to allow the geese to attain safe heights before reach- ing the shoo't"ing pits and blinds, is unquestionably insufficient, since many of the geese leaving the refuge encounter shot 75 yards away from the first line of pits. Although the Miner Sanctuary consists of only 400 acres and supports an even greater density of geese than is ever experienced at Horseshoe Lake, there have not been excessive kills near there in late years. Responsible in part for the small kills reported in the vicinity of the ITiner Sanctuary is a buffer zone that surrounds the feed- ing grounds and ponds for a distance of a mile. When geese - 12 - leave the refuge, they have sufficient space in which to gain altitude before passing over the shooting grounds. The size of the Horseshoe Lake Refuge, on the other hand, is woefully inadequate for Canada goeso, as experiences there and elsewhere have deVuonstrated so clearly. At present the refuge, because of its snail size, results not in protec- tion for Canada geese, but in a kill greater than if there v/ere no refuge at all. As a goose refuge it aas no logical basis for existence unless it is enlarged very considerably. A program of purchasing additional lands has been planned by the State Department of Conservation for several years, but has been blocked by the inflated prices of lands in the area, caused by the coininercialization of the goose hunting. Census data show that since 1942 the Canada goose in the Mississippi River valley has shown a marked decline in population. Kill records have shown an incr'ease in the kill since 1939, and bandin^, data have shown a concurrent decrease in goose survival for the same period. The conclusion must be reached that the Mississippi Flyv/ay Canada goose population has been sliot too heavily and that stringent protection is neces- sary to insure perpetuation of this population. - 13 - Table 1. --Inventory figures of Canada geese in the 14 states (Ilichi -^an, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, Il- linois, Iowa, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Mississippi, Ala- bar.ia, Arkansas, and Louisi..na) of the Mississippi I'lyway closed to hunting of these geese in 1946. Year .'umber of Geese Year ilumber of Geese 1939-40 1940-41 1941-42 1942-43 102,409 125,788 144,788 93,292 1943-44 1944-45 1945-46 1946-47 93,149 72,270 53,530 63,140 (71,624)-;H -;;- The figiire of 63,140 resulted from the regular January inventory conducted during the January 7-17, 1947, period in the normal manner, with the estimates made chiefly by aerial observations, but in some areas from ground counts. Later in the month, Cecil S. 'ilVilliams and Robert H. Smith, both of the TJ. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, succeeded in tak- ing aerial photographs of all geese resting on Horseshoe Lake and the nearby river bars, which made possible a completely accurate count from enlarged prints. The resulting figure was 8,484 greater than the nvjnber estimated during the inventory. Influx of some birds during the fev/ days between the inventory estimates and the aerial photographs may be responsible for some of the difference, but it is clear that, in large part, it is a reflect" ion of the more accurate technique. The larger figure, therefore (71,624), is believed to be the more nearly accurate one for the January, 1947, population, but the smaller one is also shov/n because it is comparable with previous in- ventories taken in the same manner and at the same season. - 14 - Table 2. --Annual shooting bag of Cc^nada geese in the region of Horseshoe Lake, Alexander County, Illinois. Year Reported Kill by Estimated Kill Kill in Cape Total iJuruber Licensed Clubs, on lion-Club Girardeau, of Canada Alexander County Grounds, Alex- Scott, and Geese andei- County Mississippi Bagged-::- ... Counties, Missouri C-T-^n-,. .-pi ■ I ■ ■ _ .■—,._■,■,,.,■■■ I ■ , . — ,.-y I _ i ■' ■ - ■■■. - .- ■■ ■ --,. ,1,.., y^ - - -_.yj, — - ■ -,. ,■■ „ 1927 -- — -- 1,200 1928 -- — — 1,500 1929 — — -- 1,800 1930 — — . — 2,500 1931 — — — 1,300 1932 — — — 2,500 1933 — — — 2,500 1934 -- -- .- 2,700 1935 — — — 2,250 ■1936 -- __ . . _, , 1,500 1937 — -- — 5,000 1938 — — — 1,200 1939 17,300 -- -- 17,300 1940 12,900 - - . •»- ._. -- 12,900 1941 , 6,524 100 150 6,774 1942 £,279 100 150 6,529 1943 11,162 GOO 300 12,062 1944 7,157 250 400 7,307 1945 4,444 500 300 5,244 -:;- Kills of 1927-1938 estimated from information gathered from club owners and hunters familiar with the area. For an es- timate of the total hunting loss, to the total number of geese bagged should be added approximately 30 per cent to compensate for birds crippled or killed and not bagged, :.nd about 2 l/2 per cent to allow for birds illegally killed. - 15 - Tabic 3. — -lumber of Canada geese 'examined in bag in Horseshoe Lake area, 1940-1945, and number and percentage of juvenile geese. Year Geese Inspected ' Number of Juveniles Per Cent in E'.ag ' of Juveniles 1940 284 • ■ ■ 226 79.6 1941 79 ■ 50 -63.3 ,1942 ' 761 549 72.1 1943 173 158 91.3 1944 500 452 90.4 1945 857 689 , 80.4 Total or Average 2,654 2,124 80.0 - 16 - Literature Cited Leopold, Aldo 1931. Report on a gar.e survey of the North Central states, Americ'in Game Association, f'adison, V'/isconsin. 299 pp., bibliog., index. pirnie, I'iles D. 1939. Wildlife conservation: "iTuisance regulations." P/ilson Bui. 51(4)2246. December. - 17 - Sv.*tf ,"5' ^^ mi: ti" m ^^t fji vis^?ntlrH«^ \W.