Snow Goose

The snow goose (Anser caerulescens) came to Louisiana in such numbers that the federal government responded with the most permissive hunting rules in American waterfowl history — electronic calls, no bag limit, unplugged shotguns, shooting allowed until half an hour after sunset, and a season that runs past the regular waterfowl season and into spring migration specifically to catch birds heading back north. This is the Light Goose Conservation Order, established in 1999, and it has been running for over twenty-five years.

The population has not declined to the level waterfowl managers originally targeted. That is the sentence the whole article is going to circle back to, so it is worth stating plainly at the start.

A Few More Facts

Accessibility

Accessibility

For visitors who are blind or have low vision, the snow goose may be the single most acoustically spectacular waterfowl in Louisiana. The collective calls of a large flock carry for miles — a continuous, overlapping, nasal mass of sound that builds as the flock approaches and fills the air completely at close range. Identifying a large snow goose flock by sound alone, before the birds are visible, is entirely possible in flat agricultural country with good carrying conditions.

The departure of a large flock from a field — the sudden escalation of calls, the wing noise of thousands of birds getting airborne simultaneously, the sound shifting as the flock banks and climbs — is a distinctly physical acoustic experience that does not require vision to appreciate and that most sighted observers also experience primarily as sound first. Snow geese are loud in ways that are accessible from the road, from a vehicle, and from any position with a line of sound toward the field.

Accessibility

Snow geese are most accessible in Louisiana from levee roads and field margins adjacent to the coastal prairie and rice agriculture zone south of I-10. North Louisiana receives birds in transit, and a cold front pushing a flock into an agricultural field in December or January can put thousands of birds within viewing range of any road crossing that agricultural landscape.

Binoculars are useful for grinning-patch confirmation and blue-phase tallying in large mixed flocks. Counting the ratio of blue-phase to white-phase birds in a large flock is a reasonable field exercise.

It also gives you something to do while waiting for the whole mass to settle.

With a flock in the tens of thousands, that can take a while. The birds are primarily ground-feeders in open fields with clear sightlines, which means they are visible from roadsides but also alert and quick to flush. A car parked on a road shoulder is less alarming to them than a person on foot — the goose has calibrated its threat model to automobiles as non-threatening objects, which is useful to know when trying to approach a field flock for observation. Pull over, stay in the vehicle, and use the window as a rest for binoculars.

The Conservation Order season, if you plan to participate, runs after the regular duck season closes and extends into March. Check current Louisiana LDWF regulations for dates and zone specifics, as they shift annually.