GETTING LAWYERED UP FOR GOOSE HUNTING

CANADA GEESE IN AN OLD BAYFIELD APPLE ORCHARD 

SEE YOU AT THE GOOSE BLIND

Thursday, 8:00 AM.  44 degrees F on the back porch. Wind NNE, light with occasional stronger gusts.  The sky is overcast and cloudy, the humidity is 76% and the barometer is rising, now at 30.24", predicting nicer weather.
   Joan and I are heading to southern Wisconsin for a week of varied activities.  Buddy is staying at the kennel in Ashland this time, since he doesn't fit the schedule very well and is not a water dog   If I have the opportunity I will do a post or two on the road.
   First, I have an Urban Forestry Council meeting in Jackson, Wisconsin, north of Milwaukee on Friday.  The business meeting will be held at a Cabelas store, which are hunting, fishing and outdoor sport Meccas. In the afternoon we will tour Johnson Nursery, a premier Wisconsin wholesale nursery.
   Next we will go to Milwaukee to stay with my cousin Susan two nights and attend a Milwaukee Brewers baseball game on Sunday afternoon.  They have been in a prolonged loosing slump, but won against Miami last night and still have a chance to be in the playoffs, so we hope they win against Cincinnati as we cheer them on.
   Finally, we will visit our old friends Bill and Allene Peebles in Oconomowoc to goose hunt.  And that is the subject of this post.
   Bill and I have been goose hunting together on and off for well over fifty years, and it is now a once-a-year event at the Peebles farm.  The trip is more about friendship, tradition and memories than about shooting geese, although that provides the rationale for getting together.  From the standpoint of the geese, the above photo was taken yesterday in an old apple orchard out on Torbick Road in Bayfield's Orchard Country.  There were perhaps a hundred geese in the old orchard, which has been heavily grazed by cattle.  They always stop in the orchard and adjoining pastures during their migration south.  Hopefully they will keep moving on the current storm fronts and we can meet again Monday evening or Tuesday morning at our Oconomowoc goose blind.
   Waterfowl hunting has become an activity more suited to lawyers than mere outdoorsmen. To whit: I need an Exterior Goose Hunting Permit, an Early Goose Permit, a Wisconsin small game license, a Wisconsin goose stamp (no actual stamp, just the word "stamp" printed on the small game license) and a Federal WaterfowlStamp, with my signature scrawled across it.  Total cost, including my senior discount, thirty-seven dollars. When a goose is shot, the hunter must perforate the date printed on the license before retrieving or touching the goose (there is a considerable fine for doing so;  I don't know if they also fine the your dog). The goose that is shot must also be reported to the DNR by phone within 24 hrs.
   Not only is it a chore to get all this legality put together (one must go to a Wisconsin license vendor and also the Post Office), but one must be a Philadelphia lawyer to interpret all the various state and federal regulations, and a New York mob consigliere if one should transgress any of them.
   The end result of all this lawyering up is to discourage newcomers to hunting and fishing (virtually all the various fish and game regulations are similarly expensive and difficult to interpret) which in turn decreases revenues.
   Most of the federal and state laws, rules, regulations and expenses are borderline irrational and could be simplified and made far more equitable, but there is no desire by the state and federal bureaucracies to do so, since they are mainly self-serving  rather than pubic-serving entities.
 Well, gotta go now, and get lawyered up for goose hunting.