If any of you are Twitter users you can now follow me @afletcher6055 or search by A P Fletcher. While not a heavy user of Twitter in the past, I going to try and post more current issues using Twitter and leave the more lengthy explanations for this blog. I will try and post both usual and unusual events ranging from frost delays, course closures, green speeds to pictures of wildlife. I am fast realizing that in this day and age the more information I can get out in as many mediums as possible, the less confusion there is about what is going on with golf course. Please follow and I will endeavor to keep you entertained and enlightened.
Operation Scarecrow 2.0 is in full swing. On Monday morning of this week I was getting out of my car and three geese flew over head. Not the high-flying trying to make some distance kind, but rather the low flying looking for a suitable home for the future flying. I was surprised that the geese had returned with the weather being so poor, but we began putting out the anti-geese material today anyway. As mention in earlier posts, there will be the addition of Coyote decoys and an audible deterrent called the goose be gone.
This morning Hugh and I put out the decoys on 12 and 13, areas where the geese often frequent in the spring. this is the earliest we have made any attempts to discourage the geese from making a home at Oakfield. We hope to discourage them prior to making nests on our property, however there is little we can do if they nest on adjacent land and travel to the course to rest feed. Our intentions are to keep these decoys on the course for the entire year and have them moved daily to keep the geese guessing. Hopefully the decoys, which rotate with the wind and have life like tails that swish, will help to dissuade the geese from home making. To be honest, when the decoys had arrived and were taken out of the box, I was skeptical of the look, however in the proper setting they look quite good.
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| The Coyote decoy on number 12. We modified the original design with some threaded rod and washers (which if you look closely you can see on the shoulder) to keep the body "puffed out". |
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| The same decoy on 12. |
To help with that process will be the the Goose-b-Gone, which as mentioned in earlier posts is an audible deterrent that plays goose distress signals every ten minutes and two minutes in length. For the time being the GBG is attached on a temporary post in front of 13 tee. The current mounting is makeshift and strictly utilitarian, just a quick fix to begin discouraging the geese. Later in the spring, before we open, we will mount the device in a less obstructive area and in a much cleaner fashion.
Here is the link to the video of the GBG in action.
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