A Lone Goose by the Highway

The Canadian Goose is a beautiful, noble bird.  Not small, and fearless, they mate for life.  Like deer, they have overpopulated some places intruded upon by humans, becoming a nuisance – golf courses, airports, gated communities…

The goose has long been a desirable game bird.  In my mind, they are the preferred Dickensian holiday fare.  I became intimately familiar with this fowl when in college, when my father would organize a highly regulated hunt on a state game preserve over Christmas holidays. 

Flash forward to the past few weeks.  When I drive from my home in Cowan, TN up the mountain to nearby Sewanee, there is a large pond just before the road heads uphill.  It is a rather awkward arrangement, a constructed affair between a house of rather imposing design and the road.  The years have not shown the pond to be most successful – drought proves its shallowness, flood pushes it into the surrounding areas.

Of late, a lone goose has held sentry in the strip of grass between the road and pond.  I always notice its presence, and ponder why he (I assume it is a he) stands alone.  It is April now, and he has been there since at least February.  Shouldn’t he be with his mates, migrating somewhere?  What about his spouse?  Where might she be?

The following thoughts are never pretty.  Maybe he is injured and can’t travel with his kindred to their next seasonal haunt.  Worse, he is waiting to meet his betrothed, forever frustrated by her demise the previous hunting season, puzzled as to her absence.  The poor guy, either way he has to be in a sad state of affairs.

Dad’s hunts were regulated by the fact that they were on a state preserve, nestled against the Ohio River in Kentucky’s far western Fulton County.  He had organized these hunts for years, but it was only in my early college years when my Christmas break overlapped with the dates of the hunt that I could take part.  It was quite the process.

I can’t remember the details, but essentially it was a lottery to get a spot on the hunt.  The state had an elaborate system for finding a limited amount of hunters, for a limited amount of blinds, for a very limited season.  Dad had it figured out how to get enough people entered into the lottery, whether they really wanted to go or not, to secure enough spots for the few who did.

Only about 6 or 8 guys were really interested in the hunt, and they always got a slot, together, thanks to Dad’s contrivances.  The party would depart Russellville for the trek west, check into a hotel, and have a rather skewed dedication to partying / getting to bed in time for the 3:30 am wake up call to get to the preserve.

We staked out the dining room, feasted and drank for a bit, at what seemed like moments after the winter sun set.  I can remember going to the local grocery store for supplies and being shocked at what qualified as supplies for such an endeavor.  Bedtime was about 8 pm.  We had to be at the preserve at 4 am.

We awoke, downed coffee, while simultaneously dressing in ridiculous layers of clothes to tolerate the near zero temperature of early January.  Arriving at the preserve, wardens would ensure we only had 8 shotgun shells apiece, run through the limits (2 Canadians, can’t remember Snows), and shuttle us into these antiquated military people movers  - the kind you would see in a WWII movie, big trucks with canvas covers stretched across ribs of piping – in the dark, predawn hours for delivery to our blinds.

The blinds were basically like a baseball dugout-cement constructs buried about chest deep with a roof and a bench running the length of it.  One year, it was about 5* when we arrived at the blind.  Another, it was 7*.  A good day for goose hunting was cold, gray, and wet, forcing the birds to fly lower in their descent / ascent from the water, about ½ a mile away.

Across the river, vast private hunt clubs filled long trenches with eager, well paying gents, 15-20 per trench, accompanied by attendants who kept the coffee flowing, prepared breakfast on the spot, skilled guides to call the birds, unsuspecting victims, and dispatched beautiful, capable Labradors to retrieve their kills.  They had no limits on shells.  An approaching gaggle of birds would draw ground fire akin to London defending itself from the Blitz. 

We lugged out supplies ourselves, but they were plentiful.  Although we arrived at an hour only Satan would applaud, these guys had it figured out remarkably well.  The lories dropped us off in the pitch black, two hours before dawn, in the near artic conditions.  Burdened with guns and God knows what from the store, we ambled to the blind.

The first year I went, the blind consisted of me, my father, and a home town high school friend of his I had known since I was a wee thing.  Jim Riley had an insurance business in Russellville, in the Gorrell building, and had earned his 15 minutes of fame competing with the Georgia Tech Ramblin’ Wrecks basketball team in their early 60’s bid for the NCAA championship.  He’s huge.  The trip and its deprivations were worth it watching him climb in and out of the blind.

Among our gear:  12 gauge shotguns, one per.  8 shells each.  An oilcloth tarp to cover us from one end to the other in the blind.  A catalytic heater to place under the bench, warming us to a very comfortable ambient temp.  Butterfinger bars (single serving minis), cans of V-8 juice, and frozen sausage biscuits. 

This seems an odd assortment of refreshment for three men, in very, very cold conditions, from 4ish am to noon when the trucks returned to retrieve us and our game.  BUT, these guys had it figured out.  The heater, which also filled the blind with a noxious gas, buoying our spirits and no doubt inhibiting our straight shooting, was a fantastic appliance on which to warm the V-8 and cook the biscuits.  Essentially, the hunt consisted of telling old stories and cooking on a catalytic heater, trying not to load chap stick instead of 3” shells.

That first year, it was indeed cold, wet, and miserable, outside the blind.  Intermittent snow and sleet peppered us.  We took some shots, Dad had one kill.  Another year, Dad couldn’t make it into the field as he was recovering from surgery, but he made the trip.  My blind partner and I saw an amazing sunrise, crystalline blue skies, and enough birds to blot out the sun on more than one occasion. 

We enjoyed biscuits, butterfingers, and V-8 as well as, miraculously, each bagging our limit.  When we returned to the lodge to check our kills, we learned not only were we the only to get our limit, we were the only to bag anything.  The response was a mix of envy and animosity.  We returned to the hotel.

Back to our lone goose by the road.  After that hunt, I hung up my guns for game.  Learning about the goose, its mating dedication, and other factors turned my enthusiasm not to disgust but a total lack of willingness to participate.  For those who still went out in the hunt, more power to ‘em.  It just wasn’t for me.  The lone goose brought all that back.

Thoughts of my now late father, the bonding moments we had hunting geese and dove and shooting in general, all layered on top of this solo bird.  I felt like he, the goose, was taunting me for some unknown, beyond the grave meaning, a message I couldn’t understand.  Really, I spent way too much cognitive energy on this guy.

Yesterday, a minor miracle occurred.  Driving up the mountain, there stood goose.  But, he was not alone.  He had a friend.  Whether this was a precursor to their departing north with a greater number of their kind or not, I did not know, yet, I was thrilled.  Some compassionate string in me was plucked, the beginning of an otherworldly harmony of other strings and percussion and flutes and unicorns dancing in the sunset that he was not alone.

Driving home, back down the mountain, I planned to stop and get a picture for my son, to let him know the lone goose was no longer alone, no longer waiting for his love alongside a country highway and a poorly constructed pond.

I whipped into the driveway of the house there, goose and mate too far out to photograph, with a clutch of goslings swimming happily between them.