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Show : Story of e. Secret of a Hunter's 5 Great Success ; : Clever Pony Explained. i Great numbers of wild geese were killed along the Texas coast during the past winter, as happens every year. That region divides with the Dakotas in the fall the honor of being the greatest goose field on the American Am-erican continent. The increasing shyness of the birds was more marked than ever. The geese have been shot at so much in the same territory that they have not only grown wiser, but many of them have ceased visiting that region. It is no longer possible to kill quantities quan-tities of geese in Texas by simple pass shooting or digging pits on the 5ulf sandbars. There died not long ago in the Nueces Nue-ces region a Mexican poacher named Gregorio who in the winter sold geese by the dozen when other men could not get a feather. All of that country is in vast pastures fenced by barbed wire and Gregorio being a market hunter, was ordered to stay out of them all. In order to keep him out the gates, which are far apart, were locked and on'y the ranch bosses had keys. Still Gregorio would continue to go from pasture to pasture, covering thirty miles in a day and to show up in Corpus Christi or Rockport at night with Canada geese hanging to his saddle sad-dle and strung all over him. One day an overseer of cowboys saw him a mile away on the prairie and, being curious, dismounted and watched him. Gregorio was on foot :700 yards from a large flock of geese. His pony bad been unsaddled and un- . bridled. Keeping the horse between him and the geese, the Mexican began to circle around them. Now and then the pony stopped to take a mouthful of grass. Any man, let alone a goose, would have taken him for a loose animal grazing on the prairie. In course of an hotr he had been worked within fifty yards of the thickest part of the bunch. Some of the stragglers were Dot twenty yards from him. Then Gregorio stepped from behind him and fired one barrel at the geese on the prairie and another as they rose. He gathered five or six, then rode to the division fence a quarter of a mile away. Evidently it was his intention to enter the next pasture. The fence was of three strands of wire, the lowest low-est one two feet from the ground. Gregorio got down from the saddle and at a word from him the horse sunk to his knees, then turned upon his side, Gregorio took him by the headstaH and pulled his head under the fem'e, then took him by the tail and puiied his hindquarters under, and so, pulling first at head and then at tail, worked fem through. Once ".lear of thv. bottom wire, the pony rose, shook himself and stood to be moufted as if nothing but of the ordinary had happened. The mystery of Gregorlo's ability to go from pasture pas-ture to pasture in search of geese and ducks wa explained and the ranch boss was so tickled by it that he instructed in-structed Ms men to let the Mexican alone. |
