By the time the last flock had disappeared on the horizon there were fourteen dead geese lying on the grass around us, and five wounded birds had flown back to the lake to die. A farmer living on the north shore of the lake told me he always went out directly the lake froze up and gathered in all the wounded geese that had been unable to fly and got frozen in with the ice. He said he often got from forty to fifty in this way.
By this time we were getting very stiff with the long wait, and were very glad to get up to stretch our legs, and congratulate each other on our excellent luck that the flight should just have come in our direction and within range.
We heard afterwards that more than a dozen sportsmen (amongst whom were two well-known Wall Street brokers who had travelled 2,000 miles for a week’s sport at this well-known Eldorado for wildfowlers) had that day lined the west shore with the hope of their taking that course, and they never saw a goose all day.
We now began to wonder how we were going to get our bag back to the farm, about a mile and a half distant, as fourteen geese are no light weight, and they were all fine fat birds (the stubble holding lots of feed for them that year, the crop having been a good one). Eventually we tied them all round our shoulders and waists and thus managed to stagger back to the farm, quite ready for our breakfast.
After breakfast we hitched up the horses, and bidding our host farewell, leaving him a few geese for his trouble, we started on our fifteen miles back to the little town of Boissevain. It was one of those glorious mornings with a lovely deep blue sky overhead that one only sees in North America at this time of year. We saw numerous flocks of prairie chicken, and added three brace of these birds to our bag.
At 12.30 we pulled up before the hotel from which we had started two days before, and were received with eager enquiries as to what luck we had had, or whether we had returned because the whisky had run out. Thus ended my first experience of goose shooting, and I have often wondered since why people use the expression “a silly goose,” for nobody could ever accuse a wild goose of being at all stupid.
In case any of your readers should ever find themselves in the neighbourhood of this lake I will try to give them some particulars of its situation and the best time of year to go there.
The wild goose is the only bird in Manitoba that is not protected by the Game Laws, and you can shoot him all the year round if you can get him. About the second week in April they come north from Mexico and Florida, and remain on Lake Whitewater till the first week in May, when they go north to the shores of the Hudson Bay to breed, coming south again in the fall of the year, remaining till the lake freezes up, when they go south as far as Mexico for the winter. I have known keen sportsmen, to whom time and money are no object, follow them thus through North America. Lake Whitewater is about fifteen miles long and six miles across, and not more than 5 ft. deep in the deepest part, with about 1 ft. of mud on the bottom. The water is alkali, and no fish are able to live in it. Its bottom is covered with small shells and this is the only reason I can think why the geese are so partial to it. They can feed on the bottom of the lake with ease, and being in the centre of a splendid wheat country they can quickly get out on to the stubble, and they feel they can sleep safely on the lake at night. The latest reports I had from this neighbourhood were very bad.
It appears that there is an American syndicate armed with a swivel-gun that comes over the line (the lake being close to the American border), and shoots the geese down in hundreds as they lie peacefully on the surface of the water at night, and, of course, they have hitched up and driven over the border with their spoil before daylight.
The local Game Guardian is evidently afraid to tackle them by himself, and the Western Canadian farmer is not sufficiently a sportsman to lend a hand. But it is a standing disgrace to the district that they should allow such a resort for geese to be ruined by a handful of Yankees, who have no legal right to shoot there whatever. Besides, the lake is quite a source of income to the little town which adjoins it, where the sportsmen who frequent this spot year after year buy all their provisions, ammunition, &c. If the citizens would only band together and make up their minds to catch the marauders red-handed, it could easily be done at a small cost, and this splendid resort for the wildfowler preserved for the future, whereas under the present conditions the birds will soon either be exterminated or driven to choose some other spot for their abode.