14 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 6, 1912. 
The Sandbar Honkers 
By AMOS BURHANS 
‘‘¥^ 7 HEN you get below Cairo,” said the old 
yy shantyboat man, “you will see nothin’ 
but a bend an’ a sandbar—a sandbar 
an’ a bend.” With this final mite of informa¬ 
tion he went into his floating domicile and poked 
up the fire, for it was frosty almost every night 
during the early part of the fall. 
We rather liked the bends and the sandbars. 
1 hey were not so much alike that one might 
say they looked the same. Of course, in cruis¬ 
ing we are eager to get as much change of 
scenery as possible, and generally we could see 
the differences in the country we were in, and 
those we had passed. Above Cairo we had come 
to the first big bends and sandbars in our cruise 
down the Mississippi. Unless one consulted 
the charts of the river assiduously, he was apt 
to become lost as to his correct location on 
them. 
And it was above Cairo, too, that we saw the 
first phalanx of honkers, long-necked and strong¬ 
winged, making a great fuss over alighting on 
this point of a certain sandbar or that, each 
seeming to pay no regard to the leader of the 
once regular wedge-shaped band. We were fol¬ 
lowing one of the (jovernment steamers that was 
towing a pair of large barges loaded with stone 
to within a few inches of their tops. This 
seemed to be the easiest way of navigating cer¬ 
tain waters where the men on the tows had to 
heave the lead constantly in order that the pilot 
might keep in the ever-changing channel. 
Off ahead, something like a mile, we could 
see with the glasses a great number of Canada 
geese flapping about in the little gale that was 
blowing, apparently looking for a resting place 
for the night, as it was mid afternoon or later. 
From the way they played in the air it looked 
to the pilot of the Wanderlust that one might 
get a shot worth taking if we could but get ahead 
of the steamer and her tow. 
Putting a couple more notches of speed on at 
the engine we passed the steamer and drew down 
on the honkers with their long black necks and 
the streak of white across the throat. They 
were swinging easily here and there, not seeming 
to care whether they alighted at all. When we 
approached they swung higher, settled down to 
a line of flight, rose higher and let a cautious 
gander lead the way. We had not even come 
within gunshot of them. The water was be¬ 
ginning to come into our mouths at the antici¬ 
pation of goose and cranberry sauce, but we had 
to retrieve it. 
When we arrived at the next bend below there 
sat the cautious gander on a bar as white and 
clean as sand could be, his flock drawn out about 
him, resting and preparing to make another get¬ 
away in case we approached too close. We tried 
a shot with a rifle and missed. One could not 
hit a cow at that distance to say nothing of a 
goose. The boat vibrated some, and moving 
made it still harder. After the shot they rose 
like a scattered legion makes it retreat—in dis¬ 
order, honking and defying us to bother them' 
again. 
At the next bend and sandbar there they were 
squatted about ready for us, but this time in¬ 
stead of waiting for our shot into them, they 
all made their little trot of a few strides, goose 
fashion, flapped their long wings and went into 
the air. With the aid of the glasses we saw 
that their number had been augmented by some 
old woman’s white goose which had at some 
stage of his career been a home-loving rascal of 
rather smaller caliber than the honkers he had 
taken up with. And by this white goose, more 
of a waddler than the rest, smaller and more 
reluctant to fly, we marked this same bunch of 
honkers from one point to another. 
As we sauntered southward at the rate of 
sixty to a hundred miles per day, motoring and 
hunting and fishing as we fancied, the numbers 
of wildfowl increased, being added to by others 
of their kind that came down each little tribu¬ 
tary of the Mississippi. All were southward 
bent for the winter to eat of the stray heads of 
grain that had been left in the fields, delve in 
the pools and pockets of the river and bask in 
the sunshine on the warm sandbars after they 
had fed in the morning, and to roost there at 
night after pilgrimages into unshucked cornfields 
along the bottoms. 
At one place I stopped for a day or two to 
pursue the keen wild turkey. The nature of 
the hunting was such that I thought moccasins 
would make less noise among the twigs and 
brush than hunting boots. I carried glasses, gun 
and patience. It was dense with stalks and 
weeds, and geese were feeding in it. They must 
have had their outposts well trained, for 200 
yards was the nearest they woifld a'low one to 
approach them. 
Dropping down the river further we stopped 
at the immense work the Government is doing 
at bend of Island No. 35. In the river sat a 
few dozen honkers, sporting themselves during 
the evening on a small bar that had just shown 
up owing to the falling river. They had taken 
this location during the night seemingly to be 
harder to approach, even if it was closer to the 
hundreds of men at work along the river front 
opposite them. One member of the party got 
a river man to brush his boat and went ahead 
of the little bar, thinking to drop down on the 
geese in the dusk and perhaps get a shot at 
them. They sat for his approach to within a 
hundred yards, rose in the air and stayed there 
until he had rowed back to the cruiser and then 
they came back to their sandbar. 
We stopped at Pushmataha Landing for a 
couple of days. The chance had come to reckon 
with our friend the white goose and his gang 
again. They sat serenely content on the white 
sand of a bar that separated a chute or cut-off 
from the main swing of the channel to the out¬ 
side of the bend. We went to the bar and up 
they flew. Hiding the boat, we dug pits and 
crept into them. And it was well we had 
patience. The geese returned and dropped on 
the bar near the boat. From the pits it looked 
as if they were roosting on it. Discouraged in 
the darkening night, we shooed them up and 
departed for the cheery boat’s cabins. 
7 'he further we went south the more geese 
we saw. When one bunch took to the air, an¬ 
other heard their prattlings and bookings, and 
up they went, too. They sat along the bars dur¬ 
ing our trip past them, easily within rifle shot, 
though it seemed they knew we could not hit 
them. Often the rifle would fail to make them 
rise. Ducks by the thousands were among them, 
more often than not taking to the air first if 
fired into. Plainly our meat was not to be goose, 
but duck, shot from the boat while traveling. 
But we persevered. We had set our teeth into 
goose, mentally speaking, and literally meant to 
accomplish the same feat. 
One evening we consulted the charts. They 
told us that a long sandbar would be found at 
the foot of a certain bend on the Mississippi 
side of the river. We halted at four. Making 
the cruiser fast was but the work of a moment 
or two. Then equipped for some wading, mud 
and soft sand going, we hied away down the 
gravelly bar and th'rough the driftwood, wreck¬ 
age, logs and old skiffs for a point where a few 
of the real old-fashioned rail-splitting pigs were 
rooting among the wild artichokes. Geese are 
wont to follow stock. We had seen none there, 
but it was a likely looking spot. 
Just as we made for a clump of willows to 
hide a portion of our approach, we saw a fine 
lot of geese making across the river and for the 
spot where the pigs had been feeding. We 
dropped to the ground and remained motionless 
for a few minutes, watching the while just where 
the geese dropped to the sand and cockleburs; 
then, screened by the weeds, we crawled, walked, 
kneed it, ran, till we had found their place of 
alighting. 
Their tracks showed them to have waddled 
off further down the shore and probably settled 
among the pigs where warning of danger would 
be given first by the “woofers.” Darkness was 
drawing over the sky. We crawled further. 
Every moment we expected them to get up fur¬ 
ther ahead than the guns would carry. Elxperi- 
ence had told us before that it was useless to 
shoot unless you had a goose practically cleaning 
the gun barrel with his long neck and knob-like 
head. 
The pigs had disappeared, it seemed. We 
crept further. Suddenly we heard a beating of 
the air with those gigantic wings, a few honk- 
ings and the entire bunch, cautious gander in 
the lead, with the old white goose close up, 
rose well ahead of us and swung off to the 
left. 
Lying still as death, those fool geese circled 
around us, swung a little higher, then gracefully 
came right over and we rose. The guns spatted 
out two charges of shot each, both charges being- 
aimed at a certain goose. Two thuds answered 
the summons of the buckshot and we shook 
hands like a pair of men who alone have put 
down a revolution in Central America. 
“There’s a dinner for the crew and the cap¬ 
tain bold,” partner shouted. 
“But we didn’t get the white one!” I called 
back, reaching over for that big, fourteen-pound 
goose that had scarce flopped after he came to 
sand. 
“We’ll have to let him go for another time,” 
answered partner, and we did. 
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