Alpena City Council Approves of 2023 Goose Hunt

Alpena City Council voted to approve the goose hunt for 2023 on September 7, September 14, and September 21.

The vote was 3 to 2, and while it was not hotly debated, there were council members who were opposed to the goose hunt.

“I’d like to just maybe see what would happen if we just postponed the hunt for one year, expanded oiling of the eggs which prevents re–nesting, and then see what our population is, as well as go in with a more official count,” said City Council member Karol Walchak. “We all agreed on that, that we’d like to get more data on the numbers.”

The goose hunt has been happening in Alpena since 2016 to manage the Canadian goose population, as it can potentially cause conflict with residents and locations in the area.

One of the recommendations for population control from the Michigan DNR is natural hunting.

“The thing with geese is, they don’t leave,” said Alpena City Official Don Gilmet. “You might make them mad, you might harass them to where they say, ‘Well, we’re not going there anymore because we’re getting harassed,’ they’re just going to go somewhere else. They don’t pick up and fly to another state. Canadian geese, the ones that we have, are the laziest geese in the biological waterfowl chain.”

One control measure that was also suggested for the goose population was oiling the Canada goose eggs with a vegetable based oil, which prevents the geese from re–nesting.

“The mother goose, she knows she’s got an egg, and instead of, let’s just say we break an egg, she’ll re–nest and lay another egg,” said Walchak. “This way, oiling prevents that egg from hatching, and prevents her from re–nesting. I just feel that’s a more humane approach from my own point of view.”

According to Gilmet, however, this process will not remove the geese.

“When you oil the eggs, the geese don’t leave,” he said. “They stay, because by the time they find out, ‘My eggs aren’t hatching,’ it’s too late for them to fly up to St. James Bay which is south of the Big Hudson Bay up in Canada, where all the geese go that don’t have babies.”

City council had three options. Vote to approve the goose hunt for the selected dates, vote to approve the goose hunt with the stipulation of for an expanded egg oiling program in 2024, or deny the goose hunt, and they chose the first option, so the goose hunt continues as normal.