Neighbors Say California Golf Course is Way Over Par for Allowing Goose Hunt

Remember this story about a beachside church service aghast over nearby goose hunters? It appears those early resident goose seasons are quickly becoming the sharp end of the spear when it comes to hunter/non-hunter interaction.

From this story on News10.net:
_What happens when migratory birds refuse to migrate? Neighbors of the Turlock (California) Golf & Country Club are outraged over the club’s decision to allow hunters onto the golf course to kill Canada geese. “It’s idiocy,” said Kym Lamarre, who lives on a street bordering the golf course and contacted News10 after the country club distributed flyers in the neighborhood advising residents of the goose hunt. Club general manager Michael Blevins said his board chose to take advantage of a special five-day early Canada goose hunting season allowed by the Department of Fish and Game because as many as 600 of the large geese had been gathering at the two small lakes on the course. The early season, which began Saturday, was allowed in much of California because an overpopulation of Canada geese had become a nuisance, according to the DFG website. Club member Jerry Jarrett said Canada geese have made a mess of the course. “You can’t putt on the greens because of the goose poop,” he said.

__But another golf course neighbor, Robert Garcia, said he would collect petition signatures to stop the goose hunt. “They wander into my yard. I love them,” he said. Lamarre said she was not against hunting, but thought the club had not taken adequate non-lethal steps to chase away the geese. “This is a civilized society and we don’t go to killing before we do other efforts first,” she said. Blevins, however, said his management had tried a number of measures through the years to discourage Canada geese from stopping in Turlock, including fake alligators and foxes placed in the lake and on the island. Blevins said they’ve even tried chasing the geese with dogs and remote-controlled boats. “Nothing has worked,” he said._

Since golf has been scientifically proven (I believe Stephen Hawking did his doctoral dissertation on the subject) to be the third most worthless sport in the history of human recreational activity, most of us would agree that goose hunting (along with bass fishing the water hazards) is the perfect a way to utilize all those polluted, ecologically-barren patches of over-fertilized monoculture known as golf courses.

Obviously some lesser-enlightened individuals disagree. Meanwhile, the geese aren’t going anywhere. Unfortunately, neither are the golf courses, so the question is, how do you reconcile the two? Is the opportunity to hunt early resident Canadas worth the bad publicity it seems to generate?