GOOSE SHOOTING. 273 



would rather not say anything about the next shot, but 

 perhaps it will be as well to give the bitter with the 

 sweet. There must be some hitch, and here it was. 

 Eleven geese near enough, all hands in the stand, and 

 as George said "Get ready!" some one shot. We all 

 fired at the break of the gun, but only got three. 

 George was mad, and the way he talked left no doubt 

 in any mind what his opinion was of the man who 

 shot. * * * 



We find that we have made a record for the stand, 

 sixty-eight geese in twelve hours being the most ever 

 killed in the same time at any stand at the lake. 



In Great South Bay, Long Island, and in Shinnecock 

 Bay there are still a few stands of live wild geese, and 

 some birds are shot there every year. As a rule, the 

 shooting is done from boxes sunk in the points of the 

 marsh or in bars, and twenty-five or thirty geese are tied 

 out as decoys. The old gander, or honker, is usually 

 put quite a distance off to one side. 



Under some conditions the geese come down to the 

 decoys here as in other places along the Atlantic coast, 

 but sometimes it happens that old and suspicious birds 

 will take the bunch down to the water far out of gun- 

 shot. When this happens, it is the part of the tender, 

 who is well off-shore in his catboat, to "swim" these 

 geese up to the decoys. He must work backward and 

 forward near enough to them to urge them toward the 

 boxes, and yet not so close as to cause them actual alarm 

 or, indeed, suspicion. As in most other places where 



