BY JIM NIEMIEC
NILAND – Due to the lack of ducks winging along this part of the Pacific flyway, duck hunting at the Wister Wildlife Area has been very slow. Until recently, there hasn’t been much of a migration of both puddle ducks and divers, and hunter success average on many shoot days has been cut down to about 1 bird per shooter. The past couple of shoots have been saved by the arrival of snow and Ross’ geese in the southern end of Imperial Valley.
WON checked in with Jonathan Shore, head biologist at the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Area to get an update on the current white goose population.
“Currently, we are looking at perhaps 25,000 white geese spread across Imperial Valley. There are some 20,000 birds on the main refuge and about 5,000 other white geese spread across other refuge habitat. The bulk of the geese showed up over last week’s full moon phase and I would expect the rest of the birds will trickle in trough the month of December,” said Shore.
 though that changes day to day.”</p>
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