Tough old goose

I shot a small Canada goose the other day, and assumed it was a young one, but when cooked it was tough. Is there a reliable way of telling a young goose from an old one?

The first thing to understand here is that geese are very long lived, so most of what you shoot will be more than a year old. If you are lucky, maybe one in four will be young. Some species have plumage differences that help, so if you are lucky enough to shoot a white-front, look at the belly; old birds have black bars here but there will be none on a first winter bird. Often older greylags also have black flecks on the breast.

As young geese grow, they move from fluffy down to proper feathers, and in most species the tail feathers start off as down but then grow firmer. The result of this is that the down wears away leaving a ragged W-shaped notch in the tip of the tail feathers. This is guaranteed on a young bird early in the season, but these feathers are often moulted and replaced with adult ones later in the winter. MS

Most shot geese are more than a year old