Cupped Wings: The Swamp Goose Lottery

My buddy Five Bucks knows what it’s like to get hit by lightning twice. The first time was with a $5 lotto ticket that won him enough green for a spanking new Toyota pickup and one of the coolest nicknames on the planet. A few years later, his $20 scratch-off ticket spat out a cool million. Can you believe that? And while Five Bucks is lucky, he’s not dumb. After taxes there was enough to pick up some rental property that will pay him a sweet penny for the rest of his life. It’s stories like the incredible tale of Five Bucks that make me drag my butt out of bed at zero dark thirty on September mornings to chase another kind of gambler’s dream: swamp geese during the resident season.

Cash 5. Pick 3. Powerball. Mega Millions. That’s what I’m after this time of year. The big payout. Taking a chance. Hedging my bets with yet another new camouflage scheme and rolling the 12-gauge dice. That’s what hunting swamp geese during the resident season feels like, at least in the swamp where I hunt.

It’s a monster of a swamp, and it’s a goose roost, which presents its challenges. We know we’re going to bust birds off the roost when we paddle to the middle of it in the dark, but the swamp is so large that not all of the birds vamoose. It’s also a loafing spot during the day, so birds are just as likely to drift in at ten o’clock in the morning as they are at two o’clock in the afternoon or all at once at noon or never at all, not a single bird. Honestly, after 15 years of hunting these swamp geese, I don’t know if they even know what they’re going to do when they lift off the swamp each morning.

So it’s a gamble. And like playing the lotto, the wins come in little dribs and drabs. Just enough jingle in your pocket to keep buying the tickets. Just enough birds to keep me returning to the swamp, even after those days when I tell myself that I’m done with it and never coming back. Because I know I could always hit the jackpot, Five Bucks style.

Of course, most of the time it’s a losing hand. Resident Canada geese are some of the wariest creatures on the planet. Think about this: If you walked into your kitchen, in the home where you have lived for years, and a sliver of jalapeño pepper, say, had fallen to the floor and gotten smooshed under the corner cabinet—how long would it take for your eyes to catch it? Five seconds? Two seconds? Almost instantly? I’d guess that you’d see it pretty quickly, because it’s out of place in a place you know well enough to maneuver to the snack drawer in the dark of night.

That’s what it’s like hunting resident geese. These birds live here year-round. They know every muskrat trail in the duckweed, every lump and bump on every log. We switch it up constantly. Use a blind, ditch the blind. Stand in front of a tree, behind a tree. Dark bottomland camo, green camo. Arrive in the dark, arrive after first light. No matter what we do, we’re still just jalapeños on a white tile floor. For now.

The best goose hunt we ever had in the swamp was one of the best hunts I’ve ever had anywhere. The morning forecast was for heavy fog. Jack and I could barely see off the bow of the canoe when we pushed it into the swamp and were immediately met with a few querulous goose barks in the mist. We paddled to our favorite trio of cypress trees and set out a ragged half circle of decoys in open water.

“If they come,” I told Jack, “they will be in your face. It’s like you’re shooting a rifle at these birds, not a shotgun. Put one down, then find another.”

They came that morning, and Canada geese coming through the fog is enough to make my heart pump blood out of my skin’s pores. Muffled, rhythmic clucks fell from the fog as the birds kept track of each other on their descent, with querying ha-runks to triangulate toward any birds on the water. Their shapes materialized like something out of a Tolkien dream—dragons in the air. The guns went off and confusion blanketed the swamp. And then they came again . . . and again.

We took 10 that morning, a two-man limit so heavy that we had to make two trips in the canoe. It was one of the most memorable waterfowl hunts of my life and, to be honest, one of the worst things that could have happened. Ever since, I’ve been chasing that 10-goose lotto ticket like a man possessed. I’ve lost a lot of sleep on September mornings, hauling canoes, hoisting decoys, hoping that lightning would strike twice in our swamp. But the goose gods own this casino. The payouts are still meager—a goose here, three there, not a thing for three trips in a row.

But I’m hooked now. I know I can win, so I know I’m gonna win again. Even on the sunny, still mornings, I might be down there in the cheap seats with a fistful of $1 and $2 triple-play scratch-off cards. The odds lined up once before. My time’s coming.

And this year I’m going in big. I think I’ve figured out their game, and I’ve got the secret sauce: ghillie blankets. Those swamp donkeys aren’t going to know what hit them. I’ve figured out their roulette table, you just watch. This year I’m gonna make Five Bucks proud if it’s the last thing I do.