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Comment by cdr | Hacker News Reader

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."

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?

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

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.

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