area, along the Hudson Bay lowlands, and north to the Cape Tatnam area 
(Hanson and Smith, 1950). Others may come from the east side of 
Hudson Bay. The migration area extends west to the Mississippi River 
and east to central Michigan and northwestern Ohio, with the majority 
of the birds funneling into southern Illinois and vicinity where most 
of them now winter. Band recoveries indicate that only a small segment 
of this population continues to migrate south along the Mississippi 
River to the Gulf Coast. Populations are building up, however, at the 
Kentucky Woodlands, Tennessee, Wheeler, and Noxubee National Wildlife 
Refuges. Additional Federal refuges and State management areas are 
being developed to attract geese southward below Illinois to improve 
distribution of existing populations and permit continued expansion 
of individual flocks in the southern part of the flyway in conformn- 
ance with the Mississippi Flyway Waterfowl Management Plan. There 
are indications that these flocks have developed independent of other 
flocks to the north and should perhaps be considered as a separate 
population. 
The Eastern Prairie population occupies a rather broad range 
adjacent to the Mississippi Valley population, with the breeding 
range merging with the Mississippi Valley population in the Cape 
Tatnam area, of the Hudson Bay lowlands, extending along the west 
coast of Hudson Bay to just north of Churchill. There are additional 
indications that a small segment of this population breeds farther 
inland in the interlake region. The western limits of this popula- 
tion extend to about the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border, through the 
Dakotas in an area lying east of the Missouri River, with a slight 
eastward shift in the migration route to eastern Nebraska, into 
Missouri, and south through eastern Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. 
As the volume of band recovery data increases, there is further 
evidence of only a slight overlap between the Eastern Prairie 
population and the Mississippi Valley population which winters in 
southern Illinois. A larger segment of this population does, 
however, move south through Missouri, Arkansas, and western 
Louisiana into Texas. This group appears to be made up largely 
of B. c. interior. 
In order to make the picture of the ranges of Canada goose 
populations in the central United States more complete, an addi- 
tional group should be added. These birds represent a population 
breeding in central Canada, migrating through Saskatchewan, western 
Manitoba, eastern Montana and Wyoming, western Dakotas, Nebraska, 
and on southward to central and east Texas. A large number of this 
population is represented by geese using the Missouri River in South 
Dakota--a portion of them wintering there. A segment of this popula- 
tion frequently intermingles with a portion of the Eastern Prairie 
population at the Swan Lake Refuge in Missouri. It has been suggested 
by Williams that this group should be designated as the Western 
Prairie population. It is assumed that most of these large geese 
are B. c. moffitti. 
