_Catching and Tagging the Wild Goose._
This was a proposition that tested my staying qualities to a standstill,
although it is true I had tagged lots of smaller birds, including the
wild ducks; but that was like coaxing candy from a baby, too easy to be
interesting.
Yes, some one has said, “the silly old goose!” But bear in mind that it
is through this silly old goose’s ability to outwit the human race that
there is one living; we would have killed and eaten them all, long ago,
but they outwitted us and went over the top. So if they are silly, what
is our number, if you please?
Well, silly or not, it took my little, single-cylinder brain over seven
years to outwit them. Actually I studied them more than I did my
financial obligations, and that’s saying a whole lot. Very true, they
will allow me to walk among them, and odd, wounded ones have eaten from
my hand. But don’t hold him, or interfere with his liberties, as one
note from his beak will alarm all the geese within a mile.
In November, 1919, there were fifty-five ducks feeding here and when I
pulled the trip-wire I caught fifty of them; but the “silly old goose”
would walk by and say “A-h-h! A-h-h!” and my family would say “Ha! Ha!”
The variety of contrivances I made during these seven years! And the
blisters there were on my hands during that time, caused from cutting
and fitting gas-pipe frames and trap-doors and stretching poultry
netting over the same, are blisters I will long remember. Then to see
the geese come, glance at it and walk away, would make any human being
feel small enough to pass a ferret in a gun-barrel. In fact this got to
be a family joke. Little Jasper said, “Papa, how many goose nets are you
going to make this summer?” Yes, I am a firm believer in the words, “Let
man have dominion over all,” but in this case I have surely been a poor
actor.
At last a thought germinated that proved a success. I dug a canal forty
feet wide and sixty feet long between two ponds. This canal was made at
the mouth of the drain tile that supplies the ponds with spring water,
the last water to freeze and the first to thaw out. A high gas-pipe
frame was built to cover the whole canal, with a trap-door at each end.
This was neatly covered with two-inch-mesh poultry netting, stretched
good and tight to prevent it bagging and flapping in the wind. The
trap-doors were left constantly up, and our domesticated geese were
educated to winter under this, in the open water at the mouth of this
drain tile. This contrivance is at the north ponds, where the geese
remain quite wild.
[Illustration:
MY FIRST SUCCESSFUL CATCH OF WILD GEESE]
It was completed in December, 1921, and March, 1922, found me away from
home on a lecturing tour. When I opened a letter from my boy saying,
“Father, your goose-net is a success; we saw fully twenty-five follow
ours under, this morning,” can you really blame me for reading it twice?
In a week or so I arrived home, and was greeted with these cheering
words, “Father, there were dozens of geese feeding under the net last
night. We are feeding shelled corn and wheat under there, and the wild
geese go under without ours leading the way.” Early the next morning I
was up and dressed, and quite excited, for I was up in the little
“oblookatory” long before the geese arrived from the lake; but sure
enough, when they came fully forty went under to feed. And they were
just as good as caught, for my previous experiments have taught me how
to make a trap-door that works to perfection. Just picture, if possible,
the way I was stepping around! Here I had been seven years catching one
hundred and nine geese, and no two bunches were caught alike; in other
words, every catch was an experimental failure! But now I am going to
catch them by the hundreds. Yet I must not pull the trap-doors while the
big flock is here, to frighten them all.
On April 21st fully eighty per cent. of them had gone north. Sunday
morning, April 22nd, only about three hundred were here, and it was now
or never, for that spring.
I climbed up and watched them while Dr. Rob Sloan, of Leamington, who is
one of my greatest helpers, stood below to pull the trip-wire. The
opportunity arrived. I signalled the doctor, the trap-door dropped in
the twinkling of an eye—and sixty-one missionaries were in captivity!
In catching the sixty-one we found a pair tagged in 1917; two others had
had their legs broken but were healed straight.
Well, now the big flock is gone, and they know nothing of this
disturbance, so now I will enlarge on this successful plan, I thought.
So in the summer of 1922 I completed my big net having over 5,000 feet
of area in it. One trap-door is one hundred and twenty feet long, one
eighty feet, and another forty feet; all three are dropped by the one
trip-wire.
Even if I had the time I could not give you a detailed explanation of
how my goose-trap, trip, and trap-doors, and so forth, are arranged. But
if you want to catch wild geese for tagging purposes (and I hope you do)
come to my home the first fifteen days in July, when the pond is dry,
and get my plans, which have proved to be a success; then you can go
home and add to them.
[Illustration:
A BIG CATCH IN THE BIG NET
Photograph shows the west wing of the big net. Note that the
trap-doors are down on each side and we are driving a bunch into the
catching-pen, which is a little corner at the end, only twelve feet
square, with a trap-door to keep them in there. The trap-door can be
seen hanging above, ready to fall.]
That fall, 1922, about 300 geese came back, but there was not much water
as the spring was very low. Yet on December 5th I caught fifty-three,
and on Saturday, April 21st, 1923, I caught two hundred and seven. Some
catch! “Let man have dominion over all.” Now I have caught three hundred
and twenty-one in one year.
While watching these last two hundred and seven gradually working their
way under the net, my field-glasses showed eleven standing on the bank
with bright aluminum tags on, but not a goose in the two hundred and
seven had been tagged before. In other words, I have never caught a
goose twice in the same net. “Silly old goose!”
Mind you, it is a job to tag two hundred and seven wild geese! And I had
only one hundred and twenty tags made. When we got these all on, Dr.
Sloan wiped the perspiration off his face with his goosey hands and
said, “Jack, let’s let the rest of the bunch go without any religion.”
It will be plainly seen that we haven’t had time to hear from many of
the three hundred and twenty-one that were caught during the last year
or so; but out of the one hundred and nine that I caught between 1915
and 1921, sixty-two have been reported killed, and forty-nine of the
tags are back in my possession, thirty-six reported at Hudson Bay; one
from Hamilton Inlet, Labrador; fourteen from North Carolina; two from
Maryland; one from New Jersey; four from Virginia; one from Illinois;
one from Indiana; and one from the Ottawa River, thirty miles north of
Montreal, Quebec.