Not only are the eggs bigger, the parent geese are a lot bigger than the more timid domestic chicken. And, says Rick Sinnott, getting the eggs away from a large, protective parent goose isn't always easy. We've been struck by a few geese, but most have been content to jump off the nest and squawk at you from nearby. But some of them are very aggressive on the nest. They can be intimidating when they're hissing at you, and they can raise a welt if they get you with their knucklebone.
Scientists also are interested in the egg hunt.
They're especially curious to know how the geese themselves react to having their eggs taken. There's two theories. If you take all but one egg from the nest, the goose will keep incubating the one egg until it hatches. Then that one nestling will have more parental protection. The other school of thought is that there would be less survival because the nest had been disturbed and it might be abandoned by the parents.