The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1908-11-08
SHOOTING GEESE
IN CALIFORNIA
Owners of Large Grain Fields
Hire Men to Stand Guard
Day and Night.
RANCHERS DID NOT SHOOT
TO KILL, BUT BRIGHTEN
Honkers Easily Take Fifty Per
Cent of the Farmers
Yearly Profits.

Los ANGELES, Nov. L." When you
see the sandhill crane corkscrewing
along the Sierra Madre,' said an old
duck hunter, "you can put it in your
pipe that the duck season will be on
soon, | saw them yesterday over my
ranch in the San Gabriel. and today [
shot my first duck, and there you are.
But duck shooting ain t what it was, ~
he continued .'When | first came to
California in the early 90 S | married
a wife whose father had 50,00oacre
grain ranch, and / started IN as goose
man. Guess you never heard of that
word. | never did before / was the
bookkeeper of the ranch. and the item
that paralyzed me on those books was
CARTRIDGES for the season of 1858, 90
600; MeXicaps and Indians TO shoot
geese, $50 l thought it was a Joke,
but I mighty soon found my mistake,
as after the first rain IN the Sacra-
mento Valley and the green began to
army OF at least 300. and / enlisted
Everybody Soaring Geese.
Everybody turned out; not shooting
geese. Lord bless you No, but Just
soaring them of the green fields Why
| rode out one morning Just before the
crops came on, and l thought it had
been showing; as far as / could see the
ground was covered with white geese
a ranch wouldn t have had a show five
minutes with them, and you wouldn t
believe me if | told you the amount of
ammunition used on that ranch in ten
years; it was as much as is used in
some wars. AS soon as the planting
began we went on duty, lust like sol
diors. Thirty went out for four hours
Then they were relieved. and so on all
night. We didn't shoot a goose; Jest
fired over them with all kinds of guns.
anything that would make a noise. try
ing TO drum them of. But when they
rose in one place they settled in another
Sometimes we started in to kill them,
and once we used an old Howitzer TO
scare them; but they got so used TO it
that it was fight to save the grain
from them.
Pick Out the Seeds.
HThey watched the men plant, and
if left alone they'd have the seeds out
before they started to sprout. and only
the efforts Of two or three hundred men
all night and all day for weeks saved
some of the big wheat fields in those
days / remember one night. 1t was
raining aud I was sitting on my horse
with three new goosemen VINO had lust
arrived. Suddenly we began to hear
the honk, honk. Louder it grew, and
as IL was foggY yon couldn I see n
thing. Down from the air came the
most awful sounds coupled with a rush
of wings. 4 Mexican in the outfit fell
off his horse and got on his knees; he
of all things had come. Then when the
roar got so loud that our horses began
TO stampede, down out of the fog
dropped about million geese. 1t was
like q snow storm, with twenty-pounG
flakes. All the horses ran or bucked the
new men off and then the geese OF
course, saw us ard-wcll it was Hades
by goose and knocked completely out
of his saddle. Two had geese alieht on
their horses and they were so thick that
when q Dig honker landed on the back
Of my horse she let hy behind and
struck a goose that was Just alghtiug
and killed it, Why, pardner. you
would mt believe half of il. if I should
stood on a little rise Of land and seen
the country for miles covered with geese
SO that you would have taken your oath
that the country was covered with snow.
Money for Schemes,
"It was discouraging, heartbreaking
for the original grain men up in Glenn
and other counties, and the big men of
fered all kinds OF money to any one
who would invent some scheme to scare
geese. We couldn't kill them. There
WASH 7 people enough in the state to eat
the geese two hundred men could kill in
night If we started in. So the only
thing 10 do was to ride around yelling
and shooting. One Y9nk who had come
out from Nantucket had an old watch.
man s rattle with him that his grand.
father used in the Revolution to scare
Indians, / reckon. When he gave it
whirl you thought fifty volts had hit
YOU. The old man had q hundred made
from the original model, he thought
they would clean out tho birds, and !
reckon they cost him $40 apiece. The
night we charged the geese whirlina
them rattlers ] shall never forget long s
I live. In the first place the snap or
click almost scared the California horses
TO death, Half Of the mustangs ran
feet, got bucked of. and some horses
were not found for week We kept
about one hundred in line and the rest
went every way, and TO sec that outfit,
yelling and screaming, going at full
speed over that ranch, every man wbirl.
ing rattle that sounded like the quint.
cscencc OF bottled thunder or electric
shocks. was caution. 1t simply set the
geese crazy
Up in Air in Bunches,
"They went up into the air in
punches like big puffs Of smoke, [
saw an explosion once on n Mississippi
river steamer at New Orleans, and for
few moments the air was filled with
pieces of cotton. This looked Just like
it. 1t was fun for those of us who kept
in the saddle. and we succeeded in rout-
ing the geese. But it was only for
few hours; they were back again the
next day or night. So I divided up the
force. Each man had dctail and
line of march, and his duty was to ride
up and down firing off shotgun and
ute this stopped, however, down out Of
somewhere would como a thousand or
two OF geese. and after two weeks Of
this we began to suspect they were
growing fond Of the rattle; and. by
iinrn thny cerEainlv MnreI Onn Of tho