Show much difficulty in keeping them from fields an old californian tells of trouble experienced in keeping rapacious and destructive fowl from wheat farms in early when you see the sandhill crane corkscrewing cork screwing along the sierra madre said an old california duck hunter you can put it in your pipe that the duck season will be on soon I 1 saw them yesterday over my ranch in san gabriel and today to day I 1 shot my first duck and there you are but duck shooting aint what it was he continued when I 1 first came to california in the early I 1 married a wife whose father had a acre grain ranch and I 1 started in as a goose man guess you uever never heard that word I 1 never did before 1 I was the bookkeeper of the ranch and the item that paralyzed me on those books was cartridges for the season of 1858 mexicans and indians to shoot geese 1 I thought it was a joke but I 1 mighty soon found my mistake as after the first rain in the sacramento valley and the green began to spring up tip the old man had to hire an array army of at least and 1 I enlisted everybody turned out not shooting geese lord bless you no but just scaring them off the green fields why I 1 rode out one morning just before tile the crop came on and I 1 thought it had been snowing as far as I 1 could see the ground was covered with white geese A ranch have had a show five minutes with them and you believe me ine if I 1 told you the amount of ammunition used on that ranch in ten years it was as much as is used in some wars As soon as the planting began we went on duty just like soldiers thirty went out but forvour for four hours then they were relieved and so on all night we shoot a goose just fired over them with all kinds of guns duy anything thing that would make a noise trying to drum them off but when they rose in fin one place they settled in another they watched the men plant and if left alone have the seed out before they started to sprout and only the efforts of or men all night and all day for weeks saved some of the big wheat fields in those days 1 I remember one night it was raining and I 1 was sitting on my horse with three new gooseman goo semen who had just arrived suddenly we began to hear the honk honk louder it grew and as it was foggy you see a thing down from the air came the most awful sounds coupled with a rush of wings A mexican in the outfit fell oft off his horse and got on his knees he was just scared stiff thought the end of all things had come then when the roar got so loud that our horses began to stampede down out of 0 the afie fog dropped geese by the thou sands it was like a snowstorm with 20 pound flakes all the horses ran or bucked the now men off and then the geese of course saw us and well it was hades for a few moments one man inan was h ill by a goose and knocked completely ott off his saddle two had geese alight on oa VIP 0 af va 1 6 lly 0 geese dropped by thousands their horses and they were so thick that when a big honker landed on the back of my horse she let fly behind and struck a booso that I 1 alighting and killed it ut it was discourage discouraging ang heartbreaking for tle the original grain inen men up in Gle gleno tiff and other counties and the big men offered all kinds of money to fo any oni one who would invent some scheme tc scare geese we kali kit them there people enough in the state to eat the geese men could kill in a night if we started in so the only thing to do was to ride around yelling and shouting one yank who had come out from nantucket had an old watch mans rattle with him that his grandfather used in the revolution to scare indians I 1 reckon when lie he gave it a whirl you thought 50 volts had the old man had made from tha original model he thought that they would clean out the birds and I 1 reckon they cost him ten dollare dollar apiece the night we charged the geese whirling them rattlers I 1 shall never forget longs I 1 live |