GOOSE SHOOTING. 



The wild goose has long been proverbial for his shy- 

 ness and wariness, and he well deserves the reputation 

 that he has gained, and yet sometimes he is found to be 

 "as silly as a goose." So that the gunner who follows 

 the geese enough to see much of them, will find that at 

 one time great acuteness and at another a singular lack 

 of suspicion are present in the ordinary wild goose. 

 Few birds are more difficult to approach than these, 

 and yet few come more readily to decoys or are more 

 easily lured from their course by an imitation of their 

 cry. 



Constantly pursued for food, their experience, 

 almost from the egg shell, has taught them suspicion. 

 On the breeding grounds in the North, at the time when 

 the young geese are well grown, but as yet unable to 

 fly, great numbers are killed by Indians and Eskimo, 

 who, assisted by their dogs, drive the birds out of the 

 shallow pools in the marshes, where they dwell, and 

 spear them with their bone tridents, or catch them in 

 nets, or kill them with sticks. In the same way many 

 of the adults also are destroyed during the molting 

 season. 



Several instances have occurred where swans and 

 geese — killed by gunners in the United States — still 

 bore in their bodies evidences of having been wounded 

 by the aborigines of the far North. The United States 



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