276 GEESE SHOOTING 



at Seal Reef and Goose Rocks the shooting is done 

 from blinds or mud holes, in which you have to 

 stay for hours waiting for the tide to drive the 

 birds in. When within range one shot is taken 

 sitting and another one as they rise, and this is 

 about all you will get in one tide. I hear since 

 I have shot there that live decoys are now used 

 with more success and a chance of some flying 

 shots. This last method is that practised at 

 Green Island, principally in the spring. Snow 

 and ice blinds are built at intervals along the 

 edge of the batture ice. Straw or hay, and some- 

 times an old blanket are laid down inside the 

 blind, which is circular like an Esquimau 

 hut. Outside, a few decoys, cut out of inch 

 boards, are stuck in the snow. Then nine or ten 

 live decoys are put out in a bunch twenty yards 

 away. Generally an old gander is tethered by one 

 leg near this bunch. At the appearance of any 

 wild birds against the sky, this old chap begins to 

 honk and thus lures them in, some actually settling 

 down on the ice if not fired at. Strong N. or 

 N.-E. winds are the most favorable. One has to 

 be in the blind before daylight and from that hour 

 to ten a.m. is the best time. With such con- 

 ditions I once got seventeen geese in one morning 

 in a blind that belonged to Charles Dion, a local 

 hunter. At Rimouski there are very few people 

 who devote any time to it, but the geese are there 

 in thousands, both in spring and in the fall of the 



