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Show '1 The story of Devvcy Soper and his strange search is curious 'enough to be included in the annals of 20th century exploration, explora-tion, if looking for goose nests can be called exploration. It all started back in 1922 when the country showed an infant interest inter-est in wildlife conservation, and the habits of birds and animals. At that time efforts to locate the nesting grounds of North American game birds were just getting underway. The summer haunts of many of the more common com-mon waterfowl varieties such as mallards, pintails and green-winged green-winged teal had been located, but the home grounds of the rarer snow and blue geese still remained a secret of nature. So in 1922 the search for the blue goose started. It led naturalists nat-uralists and professional guides deep into the wilds of Canada: they combed the provinces of Manitoba, Ontario and Qubec, penetrating the country as far north as Hudson's Straits, Their search continued intermittently until -1929; they traveled 30,300 miles in seven years, but tho secret of the nesting grounds of the blue goose remained locked in the northern wilderness. Then Dewey Soper entered the picture. As Federal Migratory Migra-tory Bird Officer for the Dominion Do-minion of Canada working out of Ottawa, Soper took up the quest alone. He was a trained naturalist natural-ist and a woodsman by birth, unbeatable attributes in a man who knew that somewhere, much farther north than any of his colleagues had traveled lay the nesting grounds of the blue goose, and that to him had fallen the task of finding them. Soper traveled light after he left civilization, a back pack filled with needed personal articles, ar-ticles, a knife and a rifle made up his equipment. He traveled alone and lived off the land. He moved straight north skirting the shoreline of Hudson's Bay and whenever he came upon an Indian village or the habitat of a solitary trapper his query was Till AIL I Cliff retwell I I the same: Did anyone know I where the blue-winged goose with the white head nested? Bit by bit Soper pieced together to-gether the scanty information he could pick up, even to noting with accuracy in which direction the Indians pointed whenever he asked his question. It was sometime in 1929, when he reached the little known wastes of BaffUn Island, almost 500. miles north of Hudson's Hud-son's Bay, that Soper accomplished accom-plished his mission. It had been a hard trip, but there on the southern shores of Baffin Island he found the nesting ground of flip hliip fnnw I've often wondered what ran through Dewey Soper's mind on that day back in 1929 as he stood sole alone on the tundra of Baffin Island surveying the seclusion se-clusion of the blue goose nesting ground. Civilization was a long way off; a thousand treacherous northern m u s k e g e swamps blocked his passage home. But on that day Soper had filled in a blank space, in the book of North American natural science, and I'm fairly sure that he was too busy making notes of his find to have been worrying very much. I never had a chance to ask him. The last time I heard of Dewey Soper he was still Federal Migratory Mig-ratory Bird Officer for the Dominion Do-minion of Canada. That was in 1935 I believe he's still around Ottawa. |