NO HONKING: GOOSE HUNTING SEASON OFF TO A LACKLUSTER START

MILLER CITY, Ill. -- Jack Collins watched a small flock of Canada geese swimming in an area of Horseshoe Lake, which abounds the Miller City Road.

"Those are smart geese," said Collins, who operates Miller Hunting Club across the road from Horseshoe Lake Wildlife Refuge near Miller City. "About 3 p.m., those geese will probably fly over the road, but by then, the day's shooting hours are closed."

The Miller Club, operated by Jack Collins and his son, Larry Collins, is one of many clubs that opened the 1991 goose-hunting season in the four-county Alexander, Union, Jackson and Williamson Quota Zone area Saturday.

The season will continue in the Quota Zone through Jan. 31, 1992, or until a harvest of 72,400 birds is reached.

A combination of older birds, weather and small number of geese here this early in the year were all blamed for a lackluster weekend of goose hunting.

"We killed a few geese," said Collins. "But, we canceled several reservations because of the small count of Canada geese in the area. We want our hunters to be happy so we gave them the option to cancel. Several did, but some hunters wanted to try it anyway."

An earlier goose census by the Illinois Department of Conservation revealed only 45,000 geese throughout Southern Illinois and the Ballard County Wildlife Refuge area of western Kentucky, with about 9,000 of the big honkers in the Horseshoe Lake area.

More geese were expected to be in the area following last week's cold spell. A Monday census was postponed and will be conducted today.

The geese are still in Wisconsin, according to national wildlife officials. Almost a million geese were counted recently in the Horicon National Wildlife area in Wisconsin.

"The geese will stay in Wisconsin until they run out of food," said Chesley Willis of Willis Hunting Club.

"Hunters make their reservations almost a year in advance," said Willis. "We anticipated last year the season would open about Nov. 18. We have several bookings for that date.

"Hopefully, we'll have more geese here by then," added Willis. "We had less than 10,000 geese here when the season opened Saturday. It takes one of two things for geese to move lack of food or freezing weather.

Patton Hunting Club, located near the Horseshoe Lake Refuge, had saw hunter success during the weekend.

"We had some shooting, and we killed a few geese," said Gregg Patton, of Patton Hunting club near Horseshoe Lake. "But, we didn't expect much activity. It's too early in the season and the geese are not here. We had some cancellations for the first weekend."

Patton said he expects the hunting to be better later. "I think we'll have plenty of geese," he said. "And, if the geese are here, the hunting will be good."

Collins, Willis, Patton and other club operators agree that one of the big factors of the goose season is to have plenty of geese and that flocks be made up of several new birds.

"The older birds have probably been here before," said Collins. "They are hunter-wise. Adult birds have learned how to avoid the hunting pressure."

"The older geese are wise old birds," agrees Willis. "This year, they're saying that there should be a higher proportion of young birds in the flock because production was better than last year. But, the early arrivals will be mostly adult birds."

Last year's makeup was about two to one adult birds over new birds.

"We would like to see the makeup about one to one," said Dennis Thornburg of Union County Wildlife Refuge. "I don't think it will be quite that high, but we feel there will be more younger birds."

Thornburg, Illinois Department of Conservation's waterfowl program manager, reported that 980,000 geese were in Southern Illinois and immediate western Kentucky at the peak count last year.

"This year's peak flight is projected at 1.3 million," he said. "But, many of the birds probably won't be here until mid-December."

No geese were present for the 10th annual Goose Fest, held at the Horseshoe Lake spillway area over the weekend.

"We had a good turnout of people for the festival," said Doris Maze, president of the Horseshoe Lake Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors the annual event. "We sold out of food."

Maze said chamber officials estimated the crowd at 800 to 1,000 people.

Proceeds from the event go to the Community Building fund.