Financial Returns To Industry From The Federal Aid - Wildlife and ...

Days
per day. Now these special early or late seasons allow daily bags of 5 or more birds. As
result the harvests of resident Canada geese have also increased. In Virginia, hunters
participating in the first September season in 1993 harvested an estimated 3,677 birds.
In 2008, that number increased to 17,500. Today, Virginia allows 10 birds to be taken
each day in the September season and five birds per day in the late season.
The late-season harvests are a bit more difficult to track because the regular and late
season harvests were combined for the first few years. However, overall goose harvests
during this time frame rose as well. In 1999, the first year that separate statistics were
kept, Virginia hunters took 9,000 geese during the regular season and 14,300 in the late
season. In 2008, goose hunters took 38,000 geese in the regular season and 16,800 in
the late season. However, the regular seasons in some of the Virginia goose hunting
zones were reestablished (they were actually closed during some years), and expanded
in other zones.
From an Atlantic flyway perspective, the creation of the early September resident
Canada goose season resulted in a harvest of approximately 238,000 geese in 2008,
and additional 19,500 geese were taken in the extended late season.
Figure 12. Growth in the number of Virginia Goose Hunting Days (1999 to 2008)
80,000
70,000
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Year
The creation of these extended early and late seasons not only resulted in increased
harvests, but also increased participation by goose hunters. In 1999, Virginia estimated
that it had approximately 9,100 active goose hunters who hunted approximately 32,292
days (Figure 11). This increased to 15,200 hunters in 2008 and 73,383 hunter-days.
Almost 50 % of the hunter effort now takes place during the early and late seasons
(Figure 12).
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