424 WHEN ON PEDESTRIAN EXCURSIONS. 



less at times place themselves on the defensive, for which 

 reason large dogs are used. As these, however, only kill the 

 birds, and are not taught to retrieve, it may easily happen 

 that the sportsman, after the termination of the hunt, and 

 when collecting the birds, has great difficulty to find them 

 in the high and thick grass. 



" The summer of 1827 was not a successful one; but 

 during the preceding year the inhabitants of Killinge, in 

 the parish of Gellivaara, thus captured, of wild geese alone, 

 upwards of sixty." 



Again : " When one meets with the large geese in the 

 moulting season in the mountain lakes," writes Laestadius, 

 " and that a boat be not at hand, one may drive them to the 

 shore either by casting of stones, or by swimming. In the 

 year 1828, here in Karesuando, upwards of one hundred 

 wild geese were killed by several squatters, in a remote 

 and sequestered lake." 



The Reverend gentleman tells us farther, " that whilst 

 moulting, the geese make long pedestrian excursions from 

 one lake or tarn, to another; and that in the autumn of 

 1821, a Lapp knocked five of these birds on the head at the 

 summit of the well-known fjall, Sulitelma." 



" The hunts after wild geese," says the Major Count 

 Jakob Hamilton, who writes from the province of Smaland, 

 where some few of the Anser ferus breed, " usually take 

 place about the 28th of June. At that period the old birds 

 have lost their wing-feathers, and the young cannot fly. As 

 geese are very wary and shy, it is difficult to come within 

 shot of them. The most successful plan is either at a late 

 hour of the evening, or at an early one in the morning, to 

 lie in ambush at a favourable spot on the strand, and await 



