Update on the waterfowl masecre in PA thread
#1
All the defendants involved in the slaughter of the snow geese have pled guilty to the violations and were assessed the monetary penalties stated in the first thread. In addition they willnot be hunting for a long long time in PA or any other state that is a member of the national violator compact which is all but 5 I believe.
#3
Spike
Joined: Sep 2014
Posts: 65
Likes: 0
I thought Snow Geese were actually a huge problem in in the US. Im sure it was just a joke but I heard they were so bad in some places they were going to use Napalm on them. I remember hunting in MD back in 1999 or 2000 and when they started circling to land next to a thawed out pond it was like a Tornado. You could feel the wind coming off their wings there were so many.
#4
Well you have to understand there are two populations of snow geese in the US. Greater and Lesser snow geese. The population of Greater snow geese is the one that is so large it s doing damage to the tundra where they breed. While there are a lot of Lesser snow geese, the ones that migrate through PA, their population is not as large and out of control as the greater population and the reason for the large bag limits and conservation season on the Lesser snow geese id to prevent their population from getting as large as that of the greater birds. It was the lesser birds that were killed in ths violation. The Kesser population is the one that has two color phases, both blue and white, greaters are all white with black wing tips and no blue phase. I am not quite sure what the purpose of your post is but I take it to mean "so what, there is too many of them anyway" which is a pretty poor attitude for someone on a sportsmans message board. Killing almost 300 birds over the limit is no joke, it isn't funny and cannot be tolerated. There was a time when we couldn;t even hunt snow geese in the east, hunting them only resumed in the mid 70s. If everyone was doing what these idiots did we could see the population back to pre 70s numbers. There is a reason for bag limits. One of the problems I have seen in more than one species with large bag limits is the loss of respect for the species and the wrng headed idea that anything goes, so what there are a lot of them. Well, there were millions of American bison, millions of passenger pigeons, and North American waterfowl was in big trouble with extremely low numbers after they were killed with no restrictions by people who thought they would never lose the large populations. Now there are few wild bison, zero passenger pigeons and the waterfown in North America is no where near what it use to be and has been a success story bringing them back to the shakey numbers we have now. Even the Canada goose population got so low not all that long ago from over harvesting that the season was closed for a few years on migratory Canada geese and only resident birds had a season. Yeah it is a long rant, but cavilier attitudes displayed regarding violations of wildlife laws really irk my liver!
#5
Giant Nontypical
Joined: Jan 2011
Posts: 8,019
Likes: 0
From: Allegan, MI
Agreed Oldtimr, as that was what I also took the post to mean! Regardless of whether a person thinks there are too many of something, you don't just ignore the law and indiscriminately slaughter stuff, but rather stay within the bag limits for the respective species. I see hundreds of pheasants a day when I'm hunting out in ND and could easily take more than the 3 cock daily limit, but that is not what legitimate sport hunting is all about and if everyone did that it wouldn't be very long and I wouldn't be seeing hundreds every day!
Last edited by Topgun 3006; 05-30-2015 at 11:23 AM. Reason: Spelling
#6
Typical Buck
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 510
Likes: 0
From:
Guy just asked a simple question and its off to the races again ! I am not sure what siting the loss of Buffalo and Passenger pigeons has to do with this as that was in the days when people thought that all game was unlimited and would last forever. Thankfully today we have modern game management and laws as this shows by this conviction !
#7
Giant Nontypical
Joined: Jan 2011
Posts: 8,019
Likes: 0
From: Allegan, MI
Guy just asked a simple question and its off to the races again ! I am not sure what siting the loss of Buffalo and Passenger pigeons has to do with this as that was in the days when people thought that all game was unlimited and would last forever. Thankfully today we have modern game management and laws as this shows by this conviction !
Last edited by Topgun 3006; 05-31-2015 at 05:20 PM. Reason: Spelling
#9
Giant Nontypical
Joined: Jan 2011
Posts: 8,019
Likes: 0
From: Allegan, MI
PS: That final sentence of mine was another question!
Last edited by Topgun 3006; 06-01-2015 at 09:37 AM. Reason: Spelling


