City Beach goose hunt approved for second year

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Sandpoint Police Chief Corey Coon went all in for the City Beach goose hunt at the Feb. 1 regular meeting of the Sandpoint City Council, where he delivered a report on the inaugural hunt and requested the permit for shooting at the beach be renewed for 2023.

“Those guys had an absolute blast,” he said of the hunters who showed up to fire on geese from a trio of blinds set up at the beach on seven days from mid-December to mid-January.

Coon asked the council to allow the 2023 hunt to occur twice a week for the whole month of November — an earlier time frame than the first hunt and intended to better coincide with the presence of geese at the beach.

“Two weeks before that I think we had 150 geese at the beach,” he said of the 2022 hunt, but the mid-December cold snap resulted in few of the birds sticking around.

As a result, only one goose was shot during the hunt, and it was not one of the animals bearing a leg band meant to indicate it was a bird that had returned to the beach over prior seasons.

“We knew there wasn’t going to be a big harvest,” Coon said, though he still considered the hunt a success.

“I have four goals in life: show up, to learn, to have fun and to win,” he said.

To that first goal, Coon noted that “well over” 100 people applied for a permit to hunt at the beach, and if every hunter awarded a permit through the lottery run by the city had participated — as well as brought along their three allowed guests — there would have been more than 80 participants at the blinds.

As it was, with temperatures dipping to -23 degrees Fahrenheit, there were days when only a handful of hunters actually turned up. Still, Coon reported that there were hunters at the beach every day they were permitted to be there.

“They were just happy to sit out there in the wind and the cold,” he said. “I think duck hunters are another breed, I’ve come to learn.”

Aside from scheduling the 2023 hunt for November, Coon said his department will work to improve the paperwork process for gathering applications and issuing permits through the lottery, as well as improve signage and communication surrounding the hunt.

“At the end of the day it was successful,” he said.

The 2022 hunt was billed as the “last alternative” to deterring geese from congregating at City Beach — an effort that has gone on for years and employed many methods, as well as spurred no small amount of local controversy.

Sandpoint Mayor Shelby Rognstad asked Coon if the hunt had been an effective deterrent, to which the chief replied, “You know what, no. I don’t think this year was a good year for that.”

However, that may not entirely be the point. Later at the Feb. 1 meeting, Councilor Deb Ruehle suggested expanding the number of days open to shooting at the beach during the Thanksgiving holiday. Coon said that’s likely, but based on advice from Fish and Game, “we don’t want to over-shoot it because then they won’t come back.” 

Councilor Justin Dick, who owns Trinity at City Beach, opposed the initial hunt and said he wished there was more science backing up concerns about the amount of E. coli present in the goose feces and surrounding water at the beach — a central argument in favor of chasing off the birds.

“I’m not for this, I wasn’t for it the first time, I probably am not going to be coming through on the second time around,” he said. However, he offered “big kudos” to city staff, Sandpoint police and others for a responsibly organized event.

“I may not agree with how this is going on, [but] I do appreciate the level of concern and management that your team and city staff had for this,” Dick said.

Councilor Jason Welker noted a big part of the reason for the small number of geese that hunters were able to fire on is that when the birds gather at the beach, they do so on the grassy areas behind where the hunters were positioned facing the lake. He asked if there was a way to rouse the geese to flight, therefore putting them in front of the hunters.

At the Dec. 7 council meeting where the hunt was first proposed, Coon had said that it’s against the law to “harass” the animals in order to shoot them. However, at the Feb. 1 meeting, Coon said “we do have a plan to get them to take flight,” though did not elaborate.

“The first time’s always hard,” said Councilor Andy Groat. “This was successful because we did learn.”

Councilors Joel Aispuro, Groat, Ruehle and Welker voted in favor of permitting the 2023 hunt, while Dick voted “no.”