GOOSE SHOOTING. 



cap-cover made of white linen, and some even paint their 

 guns white. 



His arrangements being completed, our sportsman squats 

 in his hide on a bundle of hay or dry seaweed. When the 

 wind is southerly he is kept all his time on the qui vive. 

 The geese give him fair warning of their approach, yelling 

 most vociferously, and to them he must respond " Aw-auk, 

 aw-auk, auk-auk," yelling with all his might ; indeed, his 

 success in a great measure depends upon his ability to call 

 them. My notes are rather cracked, so I have to get 

 some one to do this part of the business for me, not a diffi- 

 cult matter, as goose-calling is a part of the education, 

 often the sole education, of the Indian boys who live on 

 the coast. Although my voice is inferior, as I said before, 

 my ear is good, and I usually have a class of boys up for 

 examination much as one would test a number of musical 

 instruments and enlist the best into my service. The 

 calling serves to attract the geese's attention to the decoys, 

 and if they are new comer?, or have not been too much 

 fired at, they never fail to descend to them. 



Goose shooting, at first sight, does not strike one as a 

 very high branch of the art of '*' gunning " indeed, I have 

 heard it compared to shooting at a haystack by men who 

 have never tried it ; but, on the contrary, I can bear 

 witness to the fact that many men whom I have known to 

 be good shots at partridge, cock, snipe, &c., have entirely 

 failed to distinguish themselves at goose shooting. There 

 are two reasons for this: the first and principal one is, they 

 do not know the right time to fire ; and, secondly, they do 

 not fire far enough in front of their bird. The flight of 

 geese is very deceptive ; they loom so large in the air, and 



