The bigger they are...

[Duckman]

For those who asked, we weighed the deceased goose this morning on Wyatt's rabbit scale. This is a pretty good scale used for weighing market rabbits for the 4-H fair to ensure they are within weight limitations and for checking uniformity of market pens of 3. It weighs to the ounce.

The goose tipped the scale at 15 pounds even, probably a record for me. If you check the photo I started this thread with, you will notice it is quite broad in the breast.

Here are a couple of photos from last year showing the size variations we see around here. I may have shown these before, but here they are again. For eating, the smaller the better in my book!

[Dennis]

Beautiful bird Peter. Congratulations.

Dennis

[C.O.B.]

Is the smaller bird a lesser Canada? When I hunted them in Canada there were greater and lesser geese mixed together. I always wanted a lesser to have mounted but it never came to pass and I gave up hunting waterfowl.

[Dean Romig]

Scott K., Please show us your mounted Lesser Canadas.

[Duckman]

Originally Posted by Rich Anderson

Is the smaller bird a lesser Canada? When I hunted them in Canada there were greater and lesser geese mixed together. I always wanted a lesser to have mounted but it never came to pass and I gave up hunting waterfowl.

OK, the birds in the picture were last year's birds and the large one is a Giant but not as big as the one in my earlier photo. The birds with the mallard are as follows: Giant Canada (biggest), a Western Canada (medium), and a Richardson's Canada (smallest and indeed one that would be a lesser). Richardson's are one of the Cackling or Lesser Canada geese and they are all small. The other variety we get here is the Great Basin Canada Goose about in between the western and giant. Typical weights are Giant 14-15 pounds, Great Basin (Moffit's) 10-12 pounds, Western 7-10 pounds, and Richardson's 3-4 pounds. Somewhere I have a photo of all four varieties together I took years ago up by Fort Collins, but it isn't digital. At that time I hunted with the former head of the Colorado Division of Wildlife waterfowl program and he knew what was what on the geese. There are many subspecies.

[Mills]

That looks like a lot of fun. What kind of gun were you using? Looks like a Parker from here.

[Duckman]

Originally Posted by Mills Morrison

That looks like a lot of fun. What kind of gun were you using? Looks like a Parker from here.

Yes Mills, it is a Parker, a 32" DHE and a favorite duck/goose/trap gun.
Here is another picture of it with my son and a goose he collected with it earlier this year and one from last year that shows it better. There was also better duck hunting last year.

[Mills]

Very nice.

When I think of what these big Parker 10 and 12's were doing 100 years ago, I imagine them out hunting ducks

[Jeff Christie]

themDuckman-

Great goose. We get a lot of the big guys around here. Try a Jaccard tool to tenderize the bigger/older geese. Works wonders. You can get them on Amazon or any of the cooking tool websites.

Jeff

[MarketHunter]

It's like a running joke to me, in all the geese I've killed, I've never shot a small race canada. And I've killed two or three canada geese over the years.....

Jealous!