The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-12-29
HYPNOTIzING WILD GEESE.
Peculiar story From North Carroll
mas Roanoke River.
From the New York Sum

From the New York Sun.
There is no choicer haunt for wild
geese on the continent" said Joe Knick-
erbocker of Warren county, North Car
DINA, than that curious stretch of the
Roanoke river on its way through War
rem county. 1t is a succession of falls
and rapids, and is utterly unnavigable ex-
cept by the peculiar fiatboats we use
down there. and it requires an expert
to get either up or down the river even
with one of those
The river is a quarter of a mile wide,
and the rocks that project everywhere
above the surface from shore to shore are
scooped out in curious hollows For miles
up the river the shores are lined with oak
and beech trees and all kinds of berry
bushes. In their season acorns and beech
nuts ana berries fall into the river in
enormous quantities. As they are carried
down the stream they lodge by the hum
dreds of bushels in the hollows of the
rocks. Ihese great accumulations of
numbers to Warren county But the
geese are Just as watchful and shy as any
other geese and, fortunately, just as big
ninnies. If they were not, they might
feed and fatten on those nuts and berries
year and year out without doing us any
good, except what good there might be in
picking one off with a rifle now and then
for the difficulty of getting about i'm a boat
where they are feeding would make the
uuHlluS Oh lHem sport very barren of re-
suits. But they are regular geese. So we
play it on 'em, and gather a very credit
able goose crop every season.
Il don't believe there is another place
on earth, or rather, on water, where wild
geese are bagged in the way we bag 'em
on the Roanoke, down in Warren county
KS tbi Original with us, and "a plain case of
cesslties OF the case. We just turn in
and drive the geese along down the river
TO blind, where gunners are hid, some
thing a div 70, IT..
death on English moors. A blind that will
contain two men is made on the very
smallest rock that will hold them, and a
right smart distance below some good
feeding-place for geese. The distribution
of the rocks where the berry and nut
caches are found is such as to scatter
while there may be a thousand or more
geese in sight, there will be rarely more
than five or six in a bunch. So, you see,
we've got to get those fowls together
and this is the way we do it:
About daylight the men who are to
sit in the blind row out and get into it.
The geese beginfto come in early to feed,
and when the FLYER is pretty well alive
with them a third man gets quietly into
his boat far above the feeding place. and
drifts down with the current. Now any
one who knows anything at all about
wild geese knows that a man in a boat
can't get within gunshot of one. That
is, man in boat who doesn't try it
in the Warren county way / don't know,
and no one else in our country knows, I
guess. who discovered that man whis-
Ting in a boat exercises something like
a hypnotic influence on wild geese, but
it is fact that on the Roanoke river
such is the case.
AS the man in the boat drops down the
river he whistles as loud as he can. He
whistles any tune that may come into his
head, or his whole repertory of tunes, or
no tune at all, if he doesn't know any,
but he whistles. Instead of getting out
of that water only too quick as they
would if the man wasn't whistling, the
geese pick UP their ears, so to speak, seem
to forget about the nuts and berries, and
direct all their attention to the man in
the boat and his whistle, the little groups,
meanwhile unconSciOusly gathering to-
gether into one flock. They are not sure,
so they drift down the stream away from
him as the boat losses along carelessly
on the rapids. A skillful driver will so
he will have hundred or more geese
drifting and gazing wonderingly at him,
and chattering among themselves as to
what it all may mean, by the time they
draw near to the blind, all well punched
and affording a great opportunity to the
hidden gunners.
when the geese have fioated to within
thirty or forty yards of the blind the gun
ners cut loose. The poor geese rise in such
confusion at the first fire that it is easy
to give them a second Volley before they
get out of range, and the driver, his hyp-
motto whistle now silent, is pretty sure to
drop a few himself as the frightened fowl
wing their way over him up the river.
In this way we get lots of geese on the
Roanoke river, down in Warren county"