Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/433799
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 1 4 D awn had come and gone but the geese still squabbled from the roost, holding tight to a small pond tucked into the rolling topography of central Wisconsin and waiting for conditions to improve. The surly fog that kept them grounded also blanketed the corn stubble and turned my spread of decoys into a mere apparition. The previous morning an army of honkers had swarmed this field, which belonged to a local dairy farmer. Permission to hunt had not come without a price—a solid hour of discourse in the pungent confines of the milking parlor. But it had been worth it, and as I waited, hidden amongst an eclectic array of shell and full-body decoys, I could not see the farm through the incorrigible fog, but I could certainly smell it. A decade had transpired since I had last hunted geese, a self-imposed moratorium prompted by the escalating obligations of life. As an unfettered twenty- something, I couldn't foresee a time when chasing geese wouldn't be a regular facet of autumn. But over the last decade my young daughters had used the decoys far more than I had, deploying them as lawn ornaments, posing them as part of some elaborate scheme unfolding in their vivid imaginations. During the early stanzas of my reunion tour, I would find that some things had not changed. I was still an accomplished hack with a goose call and my aim had remained hopelessly crooked. While the morning fog would eventually lift, I found difficulty shedding the rust of semi-retirement. Amidst a truckload of decoys, a pair of hard-earned geese fill the daily limit and make up for a string of frustrating mornings and hunting downwind of a dairy farm. Daniel isermann