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Comment by cjensen | Hacker News Reader

In the US, shorebirds declined tremendously not because of habitat loss, but because of market hunting. [1] For example, in the South San Francisco Bay, market hunters killed everything in sight and shipped the birds to San Francisco for food. Around 1900, SF consumed around 250,000 ducks annually.

Considering the food situation in North Korea, I'm really surprised those flocks exist. Perhaps it is due to a lack of shotguns outside of the military?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_hunters

[2] PDF http://downloads.ice.ucdavis.edu/sfestuary/skinner/archive10...

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Now shorebirds are declining because of overfed geese which we don't shoot enough of.

http://netnebraska.org/article/news/1028942/farmland-buffet-...

That makes a pretty good case for farming the geese as well. Every year, near thanks giving, I listen to the food banks implore people to donate turkeys for the meals they prepare for the homeless and poor. And every year I hear this while walking around piles of Canadian Goose crap from birds that have stopped being migratory having found enough food and comfort in the Bay Area. And every year I think, "There is a very simple solution to this problem, at least for the short term."

The poor want the same things that everyone else want. If other families are not having goose by choice, they're going to perceive it as being a second-rate substitute.

It's a bit like getting a kid MegaBloks for his birthday. Yeah, he should be thankful that he got a gift at all. On the other hand, you should definitely try to give gifts that the receiver will actually like. That kid's probably not going to be happy if what he really wanted was blocks that fit together properly with his Lego, like the set that Sally got for her birthday.

> The poor want the same things that everyone else want. If other families are not having goose by choice, they're going to perceive it as being a second-rate substitute.

People stopped eating goose because of the expense. It tastes like flying steak. I would make it every holiday if it wasn't so expensive.

"Flying steak" you just made my night. In Chinese cuisine, there is definitely still goose served but my recollection of it is as a very fatty bird, even more so than duck.

Lobster and oysters used to be cheap food for the poor as well. Expense is a lot of what makes food desirable, though.

They're not a particularly delicious bird IMO, which is frankly why other birds are more popular, such as duck. Goose is also extremely fatty, more so than duck, which makes it stupidly easy to cook badly.

The fat is obnoxious.

You're more likely to make a mistake though by treating the legs and the breasts equally, they need to cook different amounts. Of course, that's the same way people ruin turkey. They want that whole bird to come out of the oven like in a magazine, even though the different parts of the bird have different volumes, densities, and protein chains.

On the other hand, maybe everyone's just making dry turkey as an excuse for gravy...

Gravy needs no excuses. Gravy is love. Gravy is life. "Turkey drippings are my favorite part of the bird. It's like... the caviar of turkey." -Sean Lock

I've never eaten one, but I've read they taste terrible.

I've never had a wild Canadian goose that I know of, but roasted gooose is quite tasty, used to have it every Christmas as a kid.

I'm waiting for Wabbit Season.

Taste is subjective. I've eaten wild goose (at a nice little restaurant in Zurich) and it was quite delicious, "smokier" than duck and "smoother" than venison. Doing a brief search for "Wild Goose Recipe" tells me there are lots and lots of ways to prepare them.

Where did you read that?

Goose meat tastes roughly like steak. It tends to sell for over $10 per pound. I know price isn't perfectly correlated with quality, but it didn't get high prices from nonexistent demand.

But are those wild Canadian geese, or are those some other variety that were raised on a farm?

They won't eat it. Too gamey. Folks are used to mild chicken and turkey. Geese are more like duck.

Not even in stew?

Huh, interesting. In Virginia we have problems with resident Canada geese. They eat everything, shit on everything, and taste terrible.

http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/problems/canada-geese/

It's a shame since they'd be practically impossible to miss on their landing approach and are very hesitant to take flight once on the ground. Wouldn't be hard to fill a freezer in one go.

The thing is that if you shoot them when they're on the ground, say with a .22 caliber, then they will move because they'll know they're not safe. You will fill a freezer in one go and that will be it for this year, they'll move on their migratory path.

And plenty of hunters miss them on their landing approach, it's not so easy for people who shoot one or twice a year when they go on their hunting trip.

Even if they were available, how much would a shotgun + rounds cost in the DPRK? Where are you getting your Cosmoline, and such? Maybe the first thing you do is sell your gun and buy as much rice as you can.

Uncontrolled market hunting is dangerous to birds, but the biggest problem is habitat loss.

Louisiana used to produce more food calories in wild birds hunted for human consumption than all the farms that were denuded for commercial growth produce today. The birds are mostly gone. [0]

[0] Game Wars, by Marc Reisner, the greatest environmental journalist of the 20th century.

The famine ended a long time ago. Most North Koreans, while not wealthy, are also not starving.

Wikipedia says the latest famine is still ongoing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine

North Korea has warned citizens that famine is coming.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/north-korea-tel...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/29/north-koreans-tol...

These make me believe that people in North Korea do still go hungry, and that even if they're not in famine they have severe food shortages.

The first link describes "occasional recurrences" since 2002 with a citation I can't follow. The second article describes efforts to hoard food to protect against a famine. Doesn't seem like evidence that there is, currently, a famine in North Korea.

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