1 64 SHOOTING THE GOOSE 



rises about 7 P.M. As soon as she begins to throw 

 her beams over the marshes the geese may, to a 

 certainty, be heard coming to their feeding-grounds, 

 and if they have been allowed to get a 'say,' 

 or haunt, they are not easily driven away. On 

 January 16 and 17, 1886, Mr. Napier killed in two 

 consecutive nights, on a little marsh of about ten 

 acres, twenty-eight geese with an ordinary i2-bore 

 gun, and he states that he might have killed many 

 more had he been disposed to stay on. No fair 

 amount of shooting will drive the geese away from 

 the locality, but naturally they would not tolerate 

 persecution of this kind for more than a day or two 

 at a certain spot. The nets which the local gunners 

 and fishermen set up on the miles and miles of sand- 

 bars outside, between Holkham and Blakeney, are far 

 more likely to have this effect. On the highest ridges 

 of these sand-bars are the roosting-places of the geese, 

 and here nets, thirty yards long, stretched on poles 

 twelve feet high, are constantly set on dark boisterous 

 nights over hundreds and hundreds of yards of 

 ground. Into the nets the geese have been known to 

 fly, swim, or walk ; but it is only in foul, dark weather 

 that netting is really a profitable business. The nets 

 are made of thick cotton, and it seems a marvel that 

 such heavy birds do not cut their way through and 



