A glut of geese may lead to a hunt

The Cloquet Country Club has a goose problem - between 100 and 200 Canadian geese have developed a special fondness for the 18-hole golf course on the west side of Cloquet. During the Cloquet City Council meeting last Thursday, Nov. 7, CCC general manager Matt Carlson proposed a genuine northern Minnesota solution: holding a special goose hunt.

The geese are not new, and the club has simply put up with droppings and damage for years, Carlson said. The turning point came after last year's mild winter, when some of the geese never left.

"A lot of them just stuck around, had babies, and we've gotten to the point where they're pretty domesticated and just sitting there ... some became a little hostile, protective of their young ones," Carlson said.

It is goose hunting season through Dec. 21, but the country club sits within the city limits of Cloquet, where it is illegal to discharge firearms. Thus Carlson asked the council for permission to hold the hunt, promising that it would be limited to a handful of members and they would notify the neighbors in advance.

City administrator Tim Peterson said the fact that the hunt would be a little farther away from nearby homes is a bonus, noting that CCC would be required to work with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to come up with a full blown plan.

"It's not just we want to go out there and take care of this with one option, they have to prove that they've tried other things, which they've done," Peterson said. He advocated that the council approve the hunt for one year only, citing the potential danger to golfers from protective geese as the driving factor, versus a plethora of goose poop.

Ward 2 councilor Sheila Lamb wanted to know what would happen to the geese that are shot.

"Are they going to feed families? Are they going to feed the elderly ... or are they just going to be tossed?" she said.

Carlson said he expected member hunters would keep some and give some away, but they'd be open to suggestions for places that would want to eat the geese.

Ward 4 councilor Kerry Kolodge asked who would be hunting.

Carlson said they would keep it within the membership, and submit a list of trusted hunters to the city with a proposed schedule. The hunters would have to have a goose license and could only use a shotgun. The country club is already closed for the season.

"It's not going to be a free-for-all," Carlson said. "It's going to be a very controlled setting."

Kolodge pointed out that once the gunfire starts, the geese will not hang around.

"What about the ones that fly away and you don't get them?" he asked.

Carlson talked about how unafraid the geese are now, not moving for golf carts or people.

"Our hope would be, after a day or two of that, that we probably wouldn't have to worry about that anymore, but we won't know we try, I guess," Carlson said.

Peterson stressed that hunters would follow DNR guidelines - including a bag limit of five per hunter - and the DNR would be involved.

"What I don't want this to seem like is we're just giving them free reign to go out with an AR (hunting rifle) and take out all these geese. This still would be a part of hunting season," he said.

The council voted 4-1 to allow the hunt, with Lamb the dissenting vote. Mayor Roger Maki was absent. Lamb said she'd like to see a longer term solution.