<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px">Since the early season is almost upon us, I thought I'd share a passage on Goose hunting from the late, great Gene Hill. Some of you may have read it before, but i love it everytime I read this passage. It is the essence or insanity of our favorite activity that only goose hunters understand.</P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px">FROM MOSTLY TAILFEATHERS:</P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px">"I like offshore blinds, muddy grainfield pits and being hunkered down in a ditch. I like hip boots, a necklace of calls and the heft of a three-inch magnum shell. I like warm down parkas and the taste of bad weather. I like the kind of wind I can lean into and the slap of sleet on my earflaps. I like the promise of dawn and the memories that come with sunset. I like oversized decoys, boats I can pole and the excitement in the thumping of a Labrador's tail. I like the smell of salt water, gunpowder and wet dogs. I like the wonder and the waiting. I'm a goose hunter."</P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px">...........</P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px">"I don't know why I'd rather sit - semi-submerged in a flooded pit blind that I've walked two hours through mud to get to, carrying enough stores for a trans-Artic trek - and never fire a shot and talk all night about the wonderful day I had after geese, than take my limit of a lot of other stuff. It's just because I'm a goose hunter. But if you're a goose hunter too, you'll understand."</P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P> <P style="MARGIN: 0px">GENE HILL</P>