CAUSES. 585 



In 1880, travelers over the Union Pacific Railroad 

 learned that during the migration geese resorted in 

 vast flocks to the Platte River, and gunners began 

 to go in great numbers to Nebraska for the goose- 

 shooting. .They brought back marvelous tales of the 

 abundance of the fowl, and soon the gunners gathered 

 on the sand bars of the Platte in such numbers as, after 

 a time, to almost line the river. In 1884, Mr. Burr 

 Polk, a contributor to Forest and Stream, wrote : "The 

 gunners have so increased in the last three years that 

 the weary goose, coming down from the North, or m 

 from the fields, to rest and slake its thirst, can hardly 

 find a place out of the range of some one's gun. Blinds 

 line the bars in the stream for one hundred miles so 

 thickly as to preclude all chance of a fair bag. A flock 

 of geese coming into the river can rarely strike it at 

 any point without a volley being fired at it, and as the 

 terror-stricken fowl move on up stream, hunting a 

 place of safety, their progress can be marked by the 

 booming of the guns as they pass the gauntlet of blinds 

 along their course. 



"We first tried the river at Newark, but after slight 

 scores, and having our blinds robbed one night of 

 nearly all of our decoys and game, we pulled up and 

 drove twenty miles down the river along the bank in 

 quest of some unoccupied spot. But none was to be 

 found. Hunters were quartered at farm-houses or 

 camping in tents on both sides of the river at short in- 

 tervals. As we went down we met parties going up, 

 in the hope that had actuated us. The result of all this 



