LONG SEASON AHEAD: HUNTERS LOOK TO 84-DAY GOOSE SEASON

OLIVE BRANCH, Ill. -- Goose-hunting club operators and hunters will be looking toward the longest goose-hunting season in the modern era when the 1991-92 season opens in the "Quota Zone" of Southern Illinois.

Hunters could have 84 days of goose hunting.

Season dates were established recently.

The season will open Nov. 9, 1991 and run through Jan. 31, 1992, or until a harvest of 72,400 birds is reach.

Hunters will be allowed a three-bird limit instead of the usual two.

Club owners a year ago were allowed a 70-day season or a 71,200 quota in the four-county Alexander, Union, Jackson and Williamson but the season ended with a harvest of just over 30,000 birds, more than 40,000 short of the quota.

More than 750,000 Canada geese were wintering in the Southern Illinois area at its peak last winter, with almost a quarter-million of the northern honkers at the Horseshoe Lake Wildlife Refuge near here.

But, the birds were wary.

Hunting club operators and hunters were disappointed in the season. During the first 30 days of the season, hunters averaged less than 300 geese a day throughout the zone.

Among factors blamed for the low harvest were unseasonably warm weather through the first month and a half of the season, to the older, more-experienced birds in the flock.

"They tell us the hatch was better and there will be a lot more younger birds in the flock this season," said one hunting club operator. "It should be a better ratio of younger birds to older ones."

The younger geese are easier to decoy and harvest than older geese, which become wary in their ways of avoiding hunters guns.