Show field stream 95 by vernon Goo seless shields i the there is n dot about 1 I it I 1 am the champion n goose irn of tooele thoele county the sportsmen should get together and award me a wooden metal to that effect I 1 used to get more geese than I 1 do now hunting them anybody want to buy a set of decoys and a goose calla 1 I think III take up crocheting that goose call of mine is really a good one but the trouble is they never sent me any instructions on how you should blow into it when you have false teeth every time I 1 pro preceded ceded give that come hither call my upper plate would drop down and spoil the effect I 1 tried leaving my teeth home but that only made matters worse I 1 couldn coulden t eat my lunch my goose decoys must look na tural enough I 1 had a couple of guys crawl a half mile on their bel lies trying to sneak up on them I 1 iad had to stand up and make my presence are sence known or they would have blasted into them I 1 guess I 1 d better not mention any names it might be too embarrassing to these fellows on the last day of the season we planned our attack on the geese at the tom crandall duck club very carefully we knew ap proximately where the geese were and the probable directions they would fly because of my intimate knowledge of geese and their habits I 1 was selected to plan the at tack and the strategy that s where the mistake was made let ting me plan the whole thing the next time I 1 organize an attack on geese I 1 shall do things a little dif ferent ly I 1 will very carefully draw up the plan making sure every de tail then I 1 will do just the op cosite this ought to really get them well anyway we converged on the geese that last morning in force and according to plan ern est klepetko and max kennard were to take care of the geese to the south of the club ponds casey nelson was to take the northeast end and move toward bill spivey and I 1 who would be coming in from the west this strategy was to block every flock of geese that was located on the club grounds to begin with things got off to a bad start spivey and r had just parked the tite car and started off a cross the flat when a flockoi flock of about fifty geese took off and flew dir estly over the car we were about five hundred yards away they were coming direct directly ly towards me and so I 1 dropped down in the grass and mud and tried to look like a cow at about one hundred yards distance they decided I 1 wasn gasn t a cow and swerved in the direction of bill it was then that a most tragic thing happened bill ruined his perfectly good sixteen gauge winchester he strained it by try ing to shoot too far the geese circled and set down on the mud about four hundred yards away since they had me spotted I 1 t h ot I 1 the next best thing for me to do was walk d erectly toward them and try to scare them over my friend nelson this I 1 did but they go over nelson he hadn t gone tar far enough north and so they sat down again unmolested I 1 decided I 1 d chased them far enough and so I 1 moved over with bill and we set out our decoys it was colder than a woman s heart that day and bill and I 1 about froze to death waiting for a flock to come in ken nard and klepetko figured they had exhausted their possibilities on the south end and moved down on our front max took off on a scouting trip the lake and ernest joined bill and me we had been sitting there about an hour when max kicked up a huge flock and they started to move towards us we dropped flat on our f faces aces in I 1 the mud r all three of us calling frantically the geese ignored our calling and our decoys and set down only about two hundred yards to the north of us by the rail railroad road tracks we laid there a bout freezing to death hoping and praying for a tram train to come along and scare the geese towards us after what seemed hours a tram train finally came roar ng through but the geese paid absolutely no at to it by then I 1 had enough laying in the mud have you ever tried eating your lunch face down in the muda i decided to be a good samaritan mantan sa and try and sneak around back of th them em getting them over spivey and klepetko I 1 1 made a big circle and got around them theria all right tight but when I 1 scared scare d them up they missed going by er nest and B 11 by about a hundred yards by then the shooting time was up and so we took in our de coys and returned t to 0 the car tired and footsore thus the curtain came down on the 1947 goose sea son next year I 1 hope to do better sooner or later they are going to make a mistake and come over me when they do ill probably have an empty shell in my gun and bawl everything up there is nothing left to hunt no now w but bunnies anybody know where there are any cottontails cotton tails mon da days ys happen to b be e my days off it also happens to be wash day on the shields estate it just makes my back ache to see the wife lift hose those heavy tubs around so ill lave have to get away and hunt some hing thing even if its it s just rabbits |