FOREST AND STREAM, 
[Jaw. 12, 189 
mt{£ m\& (§nm 
A CONNECTICUT WILD GOOSE HUNT. 
My Western brethren, who are in the habit of killing 
geese by the hundreds, perhaps, will probably ridicule 
this little affair of mine in which I became so deeply 
interested. Not so, however, with my Eastern fellow 
sportsmen, especially those who live in my own State, 
For ten days or so previous to March 14th, 1894, a 
small flock of wild geese had been making its head- 
quarters at Shaw's Lake, about two miles distant from 
my place. The geese were, in all probability, on their 
journey north and presumably waiting for milder 
weather to resume their trip. The fact of their being 
in the lake and remaining for such a length of time 
created no little excitement among our local sportsmen ; 
but the extreme wariness of the geese kept them well 
out of range, at least for shot guns. I could not rest 
content without making an effort to secure one or more 
of them, although I knew it would be a very difficult 
task. On Wednesday, March 14th, I visited the lake to 
reconnoiter. The geese, fifteen in number, were there. 
The sight of the lusty fellows stirred the sporting in- 
stincts within me to the utmost. It was useless, how- 
ever, to attempt anything that day, as they kept well in 
the center of the lake. I returned home with the 
intention of visiting the spot early the next morning, 
surmising that they would come in near shore to feed. 
At 3. 30 Thursday morning I was up and made ready 
for a start to the lake, taking my light weight gun. A 
brisk walk of half an hour brought me there at the 
vicinity known as "Blackbird Swamp," where I in- 
tended to secrete myself and trust to luck for the rest. 
Judge, then, of my surprise when on arriving at the 
swamp, I found the geese already there, within seventy- 
five yards of me, in a small spot of open water, as most 
of the swamp was covered with ice. Not that I saw 
them, for the moon had dropped behind the woods and 
hills at the west, which of course cast a shadow on the 
west inside of the lake where I was. But I heard them 
very distinctly. It was at that time approaching day- 
light. I supposed everything was in my favor and 
dropped on all fours to creep, or crawl, to within good 
shooting range. In less than a minute, I Was most 
woefully disappointed to hear a great flapping of wings 
and honking of geese, I listened and heard them swish 
into the water again, nearly opposite me, about midway 
of the lake. I also concluded that the geese had seen 
me (even though it was dark) and that had occasioned 
their flight. I felt that I had occasioned their flight. I 
felt that I was out-generaled in handsome shape, but 
decided to make one more trial. Leaving my position 
'I secreted myself thirty or, forty rods further up the 
shore, where the land jutted well out into the water. 
This position left the geese below me. It was now 
light enough to distinguish objects at quite a distance, 
and I very soon located the geese about 200 yards below 
me* but well out in the lake. I decided to wait as long 
as I could withstand the bitter cold without freezing 
I had been lying prone upon the ground for about half 
an hour when I saw seven black ducks approaching, 
swimming. I allowed them to pass within easy range 
unmolested ; I also discovered some shell ducks above 
me. All this I concluded was in my favor, as I hoped 
it might decoy the geese. I was right. In a short time 
I had the satisfaction of seeing the geese coming toward 
me, a long way off, but surely coming. Up to this time 
I had suffered intensely with the cold ; but the sight of 
those noble fellows steadily approaching seemed to 
stimulate my circulation into wonderful activity. The 
geese were now within a hundred yards of me," swing- 
ing in shore, and also up the lake. If they keep their 
course, I will surely get a shot, at long range, however. 
Still they come, only eighty yards away, a moment 
later, seventy -five yards; a moment or two more of 
terrible suspense, from sixty to sixty-five yards away. 
They are drawing past me in single file, from two to six 
feet apart. It is now or never. I draw a bead on the 
leader, and send some No. 4 shot in that direction. The 
geese all rise from the water, including the one shot at. 
I yefc have the second barrel which is loaded with TT 
shot. The second goose is shot just as it is rising from 
the water and falls handsomely. ' ' Shades of Jupiter !" 
Have I shot a wild goose? I rush down to the beach 
to give it another shot as it goes flapping and paddling 
away from me. What do I see yonder? The first goose 
which I had shot at is tumbling from quite a height 
and strikes the water, apparently dead. It is and begins 
to drift toward the shore and will come in below me, 
but on my side of the lake. 
My second goose is able to get out of range, although 
desperately wounded. The flock has again taken to 
the water in the center of the lake, and my wounded 
goose is putting in his best licks to join them. In due 
time the dead goose drifts ashore. Did anv one with 
his uncounted millions ever feel as happy as I did at 
that moment, when I drew the lusty fellow from the 
bright, sparkling water? 
I started for home with my. prize, and also resolved 
to visit the lake later in the day and secure the wounded 
goose, if possible. There are no boats on the lake dur- 
ing the wintertime. I was obliged therefore to procure 
one of Mr John Brown, whose boat had been stored all 
winter, and was so shrunken as to be unseaworthv. 
With the help of Mr. Brown and a young man we had 
the boat in readiness to launch about 1. 30 P. M. ; but so 
far as the range of our vision extended, not a goose, 
dead or alive, was to be seen. I took the oars, how- 
ever, with the view of making a survey of the lake. 
The young man went with me. 
After pulling half way across the lake, I discovered 
three geese away below me, on the east shore. I turned 
in that direction, and when we had approached to 
within 200 yards of them the entire flock took wing. 
We counted them and made out thirteen. There was a 
missing goose. Evidently the wounded bird was some- 
where in the lake. Two moments later, and there he 
goes, right out from under an old snag near the shore, 
and on the wing. I am completely nonplussed at this, 
and made a grab for my gun, which is in the stern of 
the boat. Too late He is out of range before I can 
insert a shell and fire at him. He flies very low and 
drops into the water half a mile above me, The prow 
of the'boat^is headed for him, and now begins a regu- 
lar 'wild goose chase. " I was certainly gaining on the 
goose after a pull of five or ten minutes. This encour- 
aged me to make an effort to overtake him. The goose 
was on to this sort of thing, however, and made a spurt 
headed for the beach. I called on all the reserve force 
in bone, muscle and sinew, but in spite of all I could 
do that goose beached himself two minutes ahead of the 
boat, and marched off around a curve of the same, out 
of sight. 
The trail was a warm one, however, and in less than 
another moment I came up to him. 
He offered no resistance whatever, and seeemed to be 
completely exhausted from his recent efforts in trying 
to escape. It proved to be a larger specimen than the 
one I took home in the morning, and weighed 10}£ lbs. , 
measuring six feet from tip to tip of wings. 
The smaller of the two geese I presented to Mr. 
Brown for his kindness and assistance in capturing the 
wounded one. The weight of the smaller goose was 
9 lbs. , spread of wings five and one-quarter feet. 
Thus ended my first and, probably, my last wild 
goose hunt, as such occasions are of very rare occurrence 
in old Connecticut. ¥m. L. Cone, Jr. 
MinniNOTOX, Conn. 
NOTES FROM THE PLAINS 
Omaha, Neb., Jan. 1, 1895.— So far as field shooting 
is concerned Nebraska sportsmen have pretty generally 
encased their fowling pieces for the winter. The close 
season for both quail and chicken began yesterday, and 
there is not sufficient inducement in jack rabbit shoot- 
ing or the uncertain pursuit of the clumsy fox squirrel 
to warrant the loss of time and incident exertion. 
Chicken shooting the past season was possibly the 
poorest we have experienced out this way in a decade. 
The drought was so severe and wide- spread that the best 
grounds in the State were found absolutely barren this 
f alL That the birds had been foreed by lack of feed to 
temporarily leave the country, however, is made certain 
by the large influx of both chicken and grouse since the 
cool days of early December in almost all of their former 
haunts. I met Mr. Hardin, who owns a large ranch north 
of Paxton in the western sandhills, yesterday, and he told 
me that the spectacle of a bunch of several hundred 
birds was almost a daily occurrence now, where a 
month ago it was next to impossible to jump a single 
one. With abundant crops T the coming season, I have 
but little fears that we will have our full quantum of 
sport again next fall. The quail shooting during the 
past season has been just the opposite. Everywhere 
there has been an unprecedented supply of birds, and 
good bags were the rule. Quail shooting in Nebraska, 
however, at its very best is laborious sport on account 
of the dense vegetation to be encountered wherever the 
birds are to be found, which is largely in the tangly 
bottoms and impenetrable grape and pluin thickets. 
There is little or no field or Stubble shooting here, and 
the gunner who bags his two or three dozen birds— and 
that is plenty — only does so after a hard and industrious 
day's work. 
And this reminds me of a little story. Two weeks 
ago E. S. Dundy, Jr. , United States Commissioner, and 
Lawyer Myron Learned and myself were out at Clark's, 
goose shooting. We did most of our work on the bars 
on the Platte, and while the birds were off feeding in 
the fields we devoted our attention to the quail, which 
were found by the hundreds amidst the network of 
brushwood on the numerous small, oblong islands with 
which the old stream is filled at this point. In fact. I 
never saw birds more plentiful in the old days back in 
Ohio than they were here. As winter seta in all the 
birds in the country seem to [leave wooded arrayos and 
creek bottoms and assemble within the mazy depths of 
these islands for protection from the advancing cold. 
Their retreat, too, is a wise one, for there is plenty of 
feed here, the shield from the steely winds the very 
best, and the dangers from hunter, hawk and coyote at 
its minimum Of course, all shooting to be had on 
these islands is of the "snap order, " and it is generally 
about five or six shells to the bird. Once in a while an 
open shot is obtained, if the gunner happens to be ou 
the very outer edge of the island, and a bird flushes and 
attempts to cross the river. As a usual thing they are 
extremely hard to flush until they have all been driven 
to one end or other of the island. They will run along 
before dog and hunter, beneath the reticulated vines 
and shrubbery, until they can go no further, when they 
flush together and shoot one of the numerous channels 
to a neighboring island or the mainland. Dundy and 
I Were making one of these drives, he in the middle of 
the island, while I skirted the edge. He could -hear the 
birds pattering along on the dead leaves and hear them 
dipping as they ran along under the matted brushwood, 
but seldom caught sight of one. Suddenly Dundy called 
me to come where he was standing. I made my way 
through the thicket to the spot, and pointing to a small 
hole at the foot of a good sized tree, he said he saw a 
quail go in there. I knelt down, thinking to catch the 
bird alive, but the hole extended back further than I 
could reach and was evidently a hollow rot. Dundy 
tried his luck with no better success, and determined to 
catch Bob after this failure we finally concluded to dig 
him out. With a couple of stout sticks we soon reached 
the root, which we found too green and too bulky to cut 
into with our pocket knives, and were again nonplussed. 
AVe were about to give the job up when Dundy asked 
what was the matter with shooting a hole into it, and 
as I could see nothing the matter with it, we located the 
quail so that he would not be injured, and with a half 
dozen shots a hole sufficientiy large to admit a hand 
was blown into the green root ; and reaching in I pulled 
out the bird alive. He was a handsome cock, and after 
a laugh over the peculiar method of catching quail, I 
told Dundy we must give him a chance for his life. So, 
pulling up our hip boots we waded out some twenty - 
five yards into the rushing Platte. I was to throw him 
up and Dundy was to do the shooting, and at a given 
signal up he went The first barrel was a miss, but the 
second tumbled him neatly into the floating ice. 
But speaking about goose shooting reminds me that 
this royal sport has been magnificent here since the 
middle of October up to date. Even the late sub-zero 
weather was not enough to drive away all the Canadas 
and they yet linger in considerable numbers along both 
the Platte and the upper Missouri. On the trip above 
alluded to the three guns netted twenty-nine big 
Canadas and a half dozen canvasback in two days. The 
white and Hutchins geese all have been gone for a full 
month. 
There has been better antelope shooting in this State 
than for a long series of years. I met Jack O'Hern, 
superintendent of the Union Pacific shops, at Cheyenne 
the other day, while en route to Clarke, and he told me 
that he had just returned from au antelope hunt at 
Bushnell, Kimball County, this State, and had met with 
great success. He said the last morning his party was 
there they saw three bands of antelope, from the top of 
a high knoll, at one time, and there wasn't less than 
twenty head in each band. Sandy Gbiswold. 
WITH THE GREENE RABBITS. 
A few days since S. invited me to go down to his 
cousin's at Greene for a day's rabbit shooting, so the I 
other afternoon we packed up our duds, took the train ' 
and bumped along toward the hunting ground. S. had j 
advised them a few days before that we were coming, 
but there was no one at the little station, and upon 
going to the post office we found there the letter, which ' 
we took along with us through the woods and delivered | 
in person to the rather surprised good people. As we 
came in sight of the big, old fashioned house we ran 
across B. , who, after looking after the guns, said he 
guessed we had come down for a hunt, and that he 
would shut the hounds up so that we would know where j 
they were in the morning. 
We received a jolly, old fashioned welcome indoors, 
and spent a pleasant evening talking shooting lore and 
in anticipation of the next day's hunt. S. brought 
along a supply of " dynamite' shells (nitro powder) at 
which the local shooters looked rather dubiously; 
We rolled over in the big feather bed next morning 
early, but could see nothing through the window. 
Scraping the frost from the glass we beheld rather a 
poor outlook. It was a raw, cold morning, and the 
ground was half covered with frost and sleet. After a 
light breakfast we went down to the barn, let out the 
hounds and started for the fifty acre wood lot, where 
there is good shooting. 
_ As we walked along toward the edge I heard a rust- 
ling behind me, and turning quickly saw a little gray 
scurrying form rapidly disappearing in the brush. 
The little 12 gauge came up in a hurry and cracked, but I 
"Bre'r Rabbit" got along, and 1 scored the' first miss, f 
It started the hounds, however, and in a few minutes 
there was sweet music. We now strung out and drove, 
through the east end of the wood. A partridge sprang 
through the brush ahead, too far for a snap shot. In a 
fe ! w niinutes we heard old trim and Stubb yelping down 
toward the left, and found they had holed the "rabbit. 
Calling off the dogs, B. started them again dh a new 
track. Now, about this time there is a little joke on 
me. I lost track of dogs and men, and after beating 
around for a time, yelling and hearing nothing of 
either, I concluded to make back tracks for the house, as 
I had no idea of getting down in that swamp when I 
knew absolutely nothing of the country, and must con- 
fess had some doubts about being able to even find the 
house. However, I found the trail, came in sight of 
the house, and thinking the boys would come later, 
started for an inviting looking piece of squirrel timber 
and sat down to watch for a chance gray. None came, 
so back I went, and was met by two of the hounds. S 
and B. said they reckoned they had better keep a string 
tied to me after that, but I assured them tney had no 
need, for I should keep a pretty close watch on them 
both. 
Well, started out again, and as the ground was get- 
ting in better condition, the dogs soon had another 
jumped. Now comes the joke on S. He and I were 
listening to the dogs, and as he started to go forward a 
rabbit jumped from behind him, running straight 
away. S. pulled on the gray bunch, missed and pulled 
again. From the rear I could watch the proceedings, j 
and wondered why the second barrel did not speak. ; 
Come to find out, S. was pulling the right hand trigger's 
for the left barrel. He looked rather sheepish, and said 
he and I were quits for the miss I made. I felt a trifle ' 
encouraged. 
By this time we could hear the hounds off to the right 
and driving our way. We again spread out, S. going 
down a side hill,"B. toward the starting point and I 
remaining near an inviting looking opening. Directly 
I saw S. bring his gun to his shoulder and waited for 
the report of the nitro. None came, and S. ducked his 
head one side and then the other, then started forward 
a few steps and looked up with a puzzled expression. 
" Art, where in the deuce did that rabbit go? I saw 
him coming straight for that stump and pulled up, ex- 
pecting to let drive as he came out the other side, but 
he didn't come and I'd like to know where he went. 
He was a white one, too. ' ' We went down to the stump, 
and found what looked to be a hole, and when the 
hounds came up put one of them in, but old Trim 
started off again, yellling in his peculiar manner with 
the rest of the pack at his heels, echoing in good style. 
"Hello," came from over the hill. "That's B.," said 
S. "Trim's started a white one I reckon, from the way \ 
he runs, ' ' came from over the hill again. 
"Yes, " answered B. "He drove him down here, but 
the rascal has slipped us. ' ' 
We could now hear the hounds driving directly back' 
toward us, and again taking up our positions, waited 
for a glimpse of the runner. Earther and farther away 
came the voices of the hounds, until they were lost in; 
the distance. S. left his place and came over to have a 
smoke and a talk. We were taking it easy, when a 
rustle through the brush away over towards the position . 
S. has left told us that something was passing, and a 
few moments the hounds came crashing through, almost 
in the very track of the sociable S. "Oh. what a 
chump I am. Why in blazes didn't I stay there " 
About this time B. came rushing through. "Didn't' 
either of you blind-eyed Indians see that rabbit?" was 
his salute. "No," we replied, but we didn't let on 
why, "Well, keep your eyes peeled. He's a white one 
