GEESE 



reputed to travel at ninety miles an hour, 

 when hitting on all four, but that is too con- 

 servative. Start the goose flesh on a teal's 

 neck, for instance, and he will leave your 

 vicinity so fast that a load of shot needs short 

 pants and running shoes to overtake him. 



I have lain in a double box alongside of 

 experienced field shots and picked up many 

 valuable additions to my vocabulary of epi- 

 thets. I have seen nice, well-bred, Christian 

 gentlemen grind their teeth, throw their shells 

 overboard, and send for better loads, even 

 smash their guns in profane and impotent 

 rage. That is, I have seen them perform 

 thus when I myself was not stone blind with 

 fury. 



We shot for a couple of days, off Ocracoke, 

 while we were waiting for Grant, but the 

 weather was warm and we had little luck; 

 then the bottom fell out of the glass and, in 

 high hopes of a norther, we ran up the banks 

 to our favorite hunting grounds. As we 

 pulled into our anchorage, the bars were black 

 with wild fowl; through our field glasses we 

 could see thousands, tens of thousands, of 

 resting geese; up toward Hatteras Inlet the 

 sky was smudged with smoky streamers which 



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