The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-02-26

difficulty as the ducks come in. flock after flock, to drink
 Speaking of wild goose hunting in Texas, though. an old Arkansas Pass na- tive 1 once met was very pessimistie.
 Wild goose hunting hasn't been wild goose hunting since they took to fencing the Texas psairies off with wire fences. he said. Its just about newt to impossi- ble now to get within shooting distance of a lot of wild geese feeding on the open prairies.
 They always have their sentinels out, in front, behind and at each side. At the least suspicion of danger ap- preaching the sentinel goose instantly gives the alarm and away the flock goes the whole outfit rising and sailing away as one bird, and getting up so far ahead of you that you might as well shoot at the moon and expect to see 1t tumble
 Tn the good old days on the Texas prares the wild geese hadn't learned the ways of hunters, and the hunters had little difficulty In sneaking in on the feeding flock and getting geese by the bacl<-load. After a while, though, the fowl got onto the hunters and their ways, and the old-timers found them selves up against the same difficulties Ill getting a bag of geese as we are up against today
 Then one day an observant plains man, pining for a shot at a wild goose but outwitted by the fowl in every way, noticed that cattle feeding on the prai- ries could crop the grass up to the very web feet of the wary geese as they fed along So what did that observant plainsman do but get on the lee side of an OK and edge it along on the prairie to where a flock of geese was feeding Getting within gunshot without being discovered by the geese, he blazed away, and when the smoke cleared away he went and picked up three geese that he had knocked over.
 "'Wel of course this discovery of the observant plainsman wasn't long in get ting spread around over the prairies and we adopted 1t, with the result that we didn't ask any odds of the geese for quite while. We found that we could Use horses just as effectively as oxen In fooling the geese and 1t was great sport. "'But then came the fencing in of the ranges with wire fences by the cattle barons who had got control of them, with the accompanying penalties for trespassing on the enclosed sections. That put wild goose hunting. on the Tex as prairies back to the trials and tribu- lations of the old times. and the man who gets his bag of geese these days on the plains sure earns his meat. There aint much use of having a law to pro- tect 'em They can take care of them- selves all right, said the old Texan. .All the same, l went out that same afternoon and returned with three Can ada geese, blue goose and three brant. I had to crawl a mile on my belly over a stretch of prairie matted with briars to do the trick, though. Anybody could have done that.
 Whether he could have had the luck to get two of the Canada geese at the first shot, the third one and the blue goose at the third shot I don't know. The blue goose got in the way of the sec ond shot as it was crossing the line of flight the Canada geese were taking, evi- dently to join it's kind the whole collec- ton of geese being punched as they fed. The three brant swung directly in range and my shot patterned enough, as they say in Arkansas, to let into each of them to fetch it down."