Shooting Times & Country Magazine
The curse of goose fever strikes again
When some unexpected geese appear, Graham Lorne is struck by that old and mysterious fowling malady that has hit the very best
Living inland amid the arable breadbasket means that geese do not feature in my everyday shooting and the mere thought of an approaching skein of grey geese conjures up romantic images of coastal marshes or misty, winding rivers. So, when
I do unexpectedly encounter a goose, there is no wonder that I suffer from ‘goose fever’ — a condition that similarly afflicted even famously experienced wildfowlers of the past, such as BB and Arthur Cadman.
It certainly did when I was on my peg on a syndicate partridge day in my home village and the cry of “geeeese!” was bellowed lustily by a distant flanker out on the golden September stubbles. It so happened that the maize cover crop was close to a small carp lake and the 15 Canada geese that had become such a nuisance to the wild-breeding mallard during the summer had been spooked into flight by the beaters.
I squinted as the skein approached, flying at speed out of the bright morning sun. My fingers scrabbled to remove the 28g game loads of 6 shot out of the breech and I hurriedly unzipped my phone pocket to feel for the pair of 36g bismuth 3 shot cartridges placed there for exactly
such a rare occurrence. The advantage of a vintage side-by-side is easy loading and the long Eley cases were fed into the chambers and the gun clicked shut as the mighty whoosh-whoosh of Canada pinions reached my ears.
Just minutes before I had been (fairly) nonchalantly dealing with some nice, well-presented early season redlegs, but now I was a trembling bundle of nervous excitement. I picked out the leader as he approached and took my first shot 30 yards in front, but it had no effect.
By this time those Canadas were closing fast, their size deceptively hiding their speed of flight. I rushed off my second shot as the skein passed over my left shoulder and the leader hunched and slumped down into the hedgerow some 60 yards behind the line.
Special memory
I then had the privilege of watching a former IGL Retriever Championshipwinning trainer handle a young labrador on to picking his first goose, which all made for a very special memory. A friend later took me to task for not asking the shoot proprietor for ‘my’ goose at the end of the day, but the dog trainer had commented on the sheer size and weight of that Canada gander.
It all reminded me of John Humphreys’ famous advice of stuffing a goose with a brick and, once the goose was cooked, eating the brick.
I am yet to shoot a grey goose.
I’ve seen plenty though, of course, when out on the east-coast marshes and the Norfolk Broads, the magnificent skeins either travelling over in ragged V-shaped formations at ridiculous altitudes or bypassing me some two marshes wide.
My friend Nigel is a luckier man and, not long ago, I watched him effortlessly pluck a bird from a speeding skein of pinks that elected to pass over his peg mid-drive and in broad daylight. They were such a wonderful sight that I was content to simply watch and listen to their ethereal goose music as the 20-odd survivors became specks in the blue winter sky, but I was still slightly envious of Nigel’s good fortune.
Only last winter, on a foggy December night, I was letting the dogs out for their bedtime run around the garden when the haunting call of grey geese reached my ears. Our
unenlightened forebears had much folklore about the calls of migrating grey geese. As the skein got nearer, the calls got louder and their wingbeats seemed to be amplified by the stillness of the fog.
I don’t mind admitting that the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, while Bonnie the labrador barked in response. Those greylags were undoubtedly trying to find a recently harvested sugar-beet field to glean the nutritious beet tops and ‘chips’.
Perfect present
I made enquiries, but failed to locate them. Then, two weeks later, a pal’s grandson delivered me a Christmas present in the form of a greylag he had shot while flighting a nearby river. It made a fine New Year’s Day lunch. We often enjoyed evening duck flighting on the River Waveney and there, too, I managed to bag a Canada goose. A big local skein frequented the marshes and their harsh honking gave us the chance to fumble for our heavy-load cartridges. The skein approached low out of the gloaming, but, predictably, the ‘fever’ got the better of me and once again I required my choke barrel to drop the bird.
It fell on the adjacent rough marsh where I got a good mark and my pal’s experienced fowling dog made a neat job of the blind retrieve, little Abbie having had plenty of practice during that season.
When the Egyptian geese were officially pronounced pests and proclaimed legal quarry, I got lucky on a couple of occasions. The plentiful and oddly garbed interlopers often fly across our syndicate shoot’s patchwork of marshes. I managed a left-and-right at evening flight during the first season and, contrary to urban myth, they are very good eating. Or maybe I was fortunate and had shot young birds.
Just before I found getting out on to the marsh too much for my ageing body, my friends organised an off-the-cuff goose drive. The term ‘drive’ is rather grand because it basically entailed the older (and more corpulent) Guns hiding behind gateposts or among stands of reed mace while a couple of younger
Guns and a band of schoolboy beaters tried to outflank the feeding skein and wave them off in our direction. I loaded a couple of the big 36g bismuth loads and looked on as the skein spotted my companions and came honking my way. They never saw me standing behind a wooden fence panel near a gateway and I prepared to take a shot.
As the greylags came over, some 30 yards up, I lowered my lightly choked game gun, which I seriously doubted would cleanly drop such a lofty target. I got a fair bit of ribbing from my pals because I refrained from taking a shot, but I wasn’t bothered. and I think I may have finally been cured of the old ‘goose fever’.
“I was a trembling bundle of nervous excitement now”