A flotilla of geese slowly swam across the small lake toward the beech. They make their rounds feeding the young geese. I counted 85 in all. Geese travel around the lake to various properties, the privet homes, the summer camps and the town beach. Soon all those geese would have been up on our clients’ beech and the grassy lawn, feeding. It would only take a few minutes for goose poop to be all over the place from that number of geese. But as that large number of geese appeared close to shore, I set Jim and Skye into the water to herd-chase them past the beech. The two Border Collies leaped into the water and swam toward the geese, turning the flotilla slowly away. As I recalled Jim and Skye, the geese decided to head toward a nearby summer camp were nobody was onshore and try their luck there. These geese were the most unwary I almost have ever seen in our 16 years of goose control service. Another time I would take our kayak with Skye in it with me and chase the geese further away into the lake, but for now, the geese were too near the camp. In a few minutes, I saw a camp counselor slowly move at the geese from a camp building on a bike, make a few turns towards the geese as they were eating and get the geese to walk off and swim a few yards up the lake, slowly.
Being chased off in summer from property to property is not unique to these geese, we have seen it over and over at a number of lakes. Of course, the converse is true, people do get aggressive with the chasing of geese, and there is legal hunting and property owners can contact US Fish and Wildlife for capture and kill service. Also, in New York State farmers and beach managers can contact State DEC for lethal permission, time of year dependent. But with nonlethal means as in chasing or herd-chasing, I have a few tips that seem to work better than arm waving and shouting. Geese are smart enough to wait out the presence of someone or dogs on a property. There is something I call “awaken the geese pray instinct.”
I describe it this way,”what is the difference between riding a merry go round and a roller coaster.” One is more exhilarating than the other; it is the difference between a form fear and a ride around a ring. Geese are prey animals, birds. That means they are in the natural world food for predators like fox, coyotes, and wolves. People, of course, have been hunting and eating geese and other waterfowl since probably Native Peoples, First Persons were doing so 1,000s of years ago in The Americas. Today with fewer predators around and less hunting the geese get used to going about unwary or with no need for the “look out for danger” attitude of a prey animal, bird. Interestingly, we herd our livestock, sheep, and poultry at home and we herd-chase wild geese.
The next stop on our morning of goose control visits took Skye and Jim and me to another lake in Western Massachusets. We stopped on a private properties lakeside lawn and beach. There was a small group of geese there eating the grass. No sooner than when I set Skye on an outrun to the left and Jim to the right the geese started moving quickly to the lake not far away. Before the dogs had finished their circular runs around were the geese were, the geese were quickly swimming across the lake. I also had the Border Collies jump in and swim after for a short distance and then took out the kayak, Skye with me and “gave chase” a quarter of the way across the lake, soon the geese were practically out of sight. We have patrolled this property for three years now. The first year geese were regular feeding there, now it’s just once in a while. The thing is, we are the only ones chasing the geese off this property with a herd-chase method.
My advice is,” A gentle scare is worse than no scare at all, geese get resilient.”Repeated visits of dogs that look like they mean business but have the disposition not to hurt anything helps a lot with humane goose control. It helps to have good dogs, but we have clients who use golf carts and ATVs to good advantage, or, in addition, use their own dogs. Fencing and decoys and other nonlethal means can help but only help. The best practice to keeping geese under control with nonlethal methods is to “awaken their pray instinct,” give them a roller coaster ride and then repeat and repeat, soon you will find they will move off and may even stay away. Of course, per Federal guidelines directed from the Migratory Bird Act, it is illegal to hit, hurt geese without a hunting permit or permission in classified situations. When chasing geese you can be held responsible if you throw objects and separate families,of geese.