With each passing winter, goose numbers continue to increase in the Mississippi Delta, but that hasn't translated to a significant growth in the number of Mississippi goose hunters. And that confounds Brad Harris of Greenwood.

"It's about as much fun as you're going to have as far as hunting goes," he remarked. "But I guess there's just not enough people like me who are willing to do the work it takes to become successful at goose hunting.

"I will say this -- it sure as heck ain't easy."

The fact is that a lot of people don't want to spend hours tromping through muddy Delta fields setting up hundreds -- if not thousands -- of goose rags or hard decoys just to shoot geese. The latest surveys by state and federal wildlife officials still consider the number of goose hunters to be too small to count as a significant user group.

"It is true that most Mississippi goose hunters are just duck hunters who take advantage of the opportunity to kill a goose when it presents itself," said Scott Baker, the migratory bird coordinator for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. "We don't have that many honest-to-goodness goose hunters. While the number is growing, both during the regular and extended season, it's still not a significant number, even though we have a lot of geese in the state each year.

"It just hasn't caught on here. I wish I knew exactly why. But it just hasn't."

According to the latest statistics available from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Harvest Information Program, an estimated 6,500 individuals claimed to have hunted geese during the 2004 season, resulting in a total harvest of 21,000 geese. No information is provided as to how many of those hunters actually were specifically hunting geese at the time they shot a goose.

Also, no information was forthcoming as to how many of those hunted during the special 15-day early Canada goose season in September, but since 8,707 Canada geese were claimed, the highest of any species, it's reasonable to conclude that many did.

The bottom line, Harris said, is that true goose hunters are few and far between during the regular goose seasons. He points to the HIP survey for his proof.

"Most of the goose hunting done in Mississippi is accidental," he asserted. "Duck hunters kill the majority of the geese in Mississippi when they aren't even goose hunting. I think the telling factor is in the average number of geese harvested in that survey. If there are 6,500 goose hunters, and the total harvest is about 21,000 geese, that means the average harvest is about three per hunter. That means there are a lot of hunters killing one or two per season, because a serious goose hunter, when he's on geese, is going to be killing at least five to 10 per day.

"The limit on snows, blues and Ross' geese is 20 per day in aggregate and those are the geese that are so plentiful in the huge flocks in the Delta. That's what we're hunting. I kept count this year, and I killed close to 320 snow geese alone, give or take a few, plus some blues and Ross'. That's the kind of action you can get when you concentrate on geese."