THE BIRD OF THE HOUR 
tinent, and being thus widely distributed, 
their great numbers are not observed. 
Then again, the innumerable flocks that 
follow the shores of the Atlantic and the 
Pacific oceans, nowadays, instead of 
skirting the coastline under a dropping 
fusillade for two thousand miles or so, 
have, no doubt after giving the matter 
some consideration, resolved to go far- 
ther out to sea, almost out of sight of land, 
as being a much healthier route. 
The wild goose, as I observed early in 
this article, is a fowl of some intelligence, 
and in his wisdom he has of late years 
taken to passing over the interior as high 
up as possible, as well as to going as far 
out to sea on the coasts as is practicable. 
In both cases he is far out of shot, or even 
observation—unless driven down by storms 
or by want of food. 
It is when halting to feed (which they 
sometimes do for some weeks in a given 
locality) that most Canada geese are shot 
in the States and Canada. A stormy 
period (especially when accompanied or 
followed by driving snow or dense mist) 
is the time of all times to bag wild geese. 
When feeding, geese are difficult, almost 
impossible, to stalk, as they select for 
feeding grounds wheat, rye or buckwheat 
stubbles, or the young crops of fall wheat 
and rye, and take remarkably good care 
to feed out of range of any cover that could 
shelter a prowling enemy, besides having a 
squad of vigilant sentries always on the 
alert. Even at night, whether they abide 
on some sandbar, some flat, desolate dune 
or sea-meadow sprinkled with tufts of 
faded marsh grass and situated’ on what 
Swinburne calls, “the wrathful, woeful 
marge of earth and sea,” or out on the 
ice of some frozen bay or small lake, or 
on the shallow, reed-lined waters of some 
great lagoon, there are always the vigilant 
old ganders posted at regular intervals 
all round the great flocks, and ready at 
the slightest provocation to raise their 
sonorous cry of alarm. 
It is not quite impossible to stalk feeding 
wild geese if you can find any cover to con- 
ceal you during the process. But the 
trouble is there seldom or never is any 
cover that will hide a cat—far less a man— 
near places where wild geese generally 
301 
feed. Out West they often successfully 
stalk wild geese by getting on the far side 
of some quiet old ox or horse (of a white 
color if attainable) and moving the animal - 
around them in gradually decreasing 
circles till within range. I never tried this 
myself, but once I got a double shot at a 
large flock in the open by keeping in the 
rear of a bunch of scrub cattle that were 
obligingly feeding in the direction of the 
game. I got so near that my two shots 
knocked over five geese before they got out 
of the treacherous neighborhood of those 
cows. A chance like this, however, might 
not happen again in a hundred years. 
The true method of making an impres- 
sion on a flock of wild geese whose feeding 
grounds you have reconnoitered is to as- 
certain accurately the line of their flight 
to and from those feeding grounds (a not 
very difficult matter), and ambush them 
somewhere on it, which latter will prove a 
much more difficult task. It is better for 
many reasons to intercept them while 
entering the fields where they have been in 
the habit of feeding, or while they are 
making those investigatory circles round 
and round the feeding grounds, which 
wild geese never omit before settling down. 
There is a good chance that somewhere 
on this line of flight there may be some 
clump of bushes, heap of straw, or pile 
of stones or rails, which the wild geese 
have been accustomed to see there, and 
_ which, therefore, they do not suspect. If 
the hunter gets behind such a shelter, keeps 
very quiet and has fair good luck, he may 
get a shot. Any attempt to construct an 
artificial blind or shelter on the ground 
after these geese have been frequenting it 
long enough to be familiar with its features 
would be foolhardy. 
In the wilderness of northeast Ontario 
and northwest Quebec, where I have 
mostly shot the good gray goose, and 
where, in certain regions, his numbers are 
enormous, he is far more easy to approach 
than when he enters civilization beset 
with snares, but he is even there a wild, 
wary bird. He appears in these Northern 
regions from the beginning of April till 
about the middle of May, which is the 
time of his vernal flight and is called by 
the Indians, “‘the goose moon.” He leaves 
