Thirty years ago, the goose population in the Pacific Flyway was so small that hunters in most of the Central Valley were limited to two per day, and the season for the coveted white-fronted goose was under a month long. Those tight hunting restrictions – combined with warm weather in northern nesting grounds and abundant food here in the wintering grounds – worked. Today, most geese in the Pacific Flyway are thriving.

The populations of snow geese and cackling Canada geese have almost doubled. The white-fronted, or specklebelly, population has risen more than sixfold. And the population of Aleutians – once close to extinction because of arctic foxes in their nesting grounds – has leapt to more than 10,000 from fewer than 3,000. "We paid our dues. Now we're reaping the benefits," said Dan Yparraguirre, waterfowl coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Game.

This year, hunters can take specklebelly geese – "the rib-eye in the sky" – for the entire 100-day waterfowl season in most of the Valley, and can bring home eight geese of various species a day, including four specklebellies.

Just because you are allowed to kill more geese these days doesn't mean you will, though, say veteran guides and hunt property managers. They can be tough to hunt.

Dennis Currier, owner of Whifflemaster Taxidermy and Guide Service in Maxwell, said goose hunting for the past two seasons has been "fair," and the limit of eight per day is almost irrelevant "because on the best day possible, you're not going to shoot eight geese."

You can probably get your limit of six dark geese – Canadas and specklebellies – but snow geese will give you trouble, he said.

"Even with 1,500 to 2,000 decoys out, you're lucky if you can scrape a few snows," he said. "If your decoy spread is not walking and talking, then you're not going to get snow geese."

Pat McNeil, duck-hunting property manager for the Golden Ram Sportsman's Club, agrees.

"Unless you get lucky and have a wind keeping them down, they're a wily bird," he said.

Specklebelly hunting on the various Golden Ram properties, however, has been excellent.

"In the last couple of years, the numbers of specks they're getting has doubled, if not tripled," McNeil said.

One persistent wrinkle in specklebelly hunting is protections for the tule white-fronted goose, which has a tiny population of about 12,000 worldwide. On the wing, the tule goose looks just like a regular specklebelly. Hunters generally don't know whether they've shot a tule until they have it in hand.

"Fortunately, tules are in a relatively small area," the DFG's Yparraguirre said.

To protect the tule goose, the state limits all white-front hunting in the tule's core wintering ground, which includes the popular Sacramento, Delevan and Colusa national wildlife refuges. In that area, hunters may take only two white-fronted geese per day, and only for the first half of the waterfowl season.

There's still one goose that gets even more protection: the brant, a sea goose that winters primarily in Mexico but has some wintering grounds in California. The brant season in California is just 30 days long, and hunters may take no more than two per day.

"They've been declining over the past several years because of problems on the breeding grounds in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta (in Alaska)," said Fritz Reid, director of conservation and planning for Ducks Unlimited.

California hunters probably take very few brant anyway, said Gary Owens, chief financial officer of the Black Brant Group, which is dedicated to funding brant research and preserving hunting rights in Morro Bay, one of the two places in California where brant winter.

"We've got maybe 25 to 30 people who hunt Morro Bay, and over the course of a season we may take 100 birds," Owens said. "They lose more in flights from Alaska to Mexico than they do during the hunting season in California."