This piece describes a very unusual way to catch your Thanksgiving dinner.
For me Thanksgiving is about celebrating the foods gathered, hunted, and picked from the wild or the garden. My favorite Thanksgivings are the ones with as many foods as possible having been harvested by me or friends. When I was growing up most of our Thanksgiving food came from the grocery store. Food was just food for me in those days. Thanksgiving was a celebration of eating.
Now age has tempered my appetite, and the joy is in being together with others and celebrating the wonderful animals, plants, and berries that come from this land. These foods are rich in flavor, the colors dazzle a dull November day, and behind much of this harvested food is often a story that you just don’t get from grocery store food. This is one of mine from a couple of years ago.
September 1st, 2012. Lower Yukon River.
It was a day I just couldn’t ignore. I rolled out of bed at 5:12 for my sonar shift and continued to work until noon, fishing and mending net. My aching back and shoulders and weary body which already felt that way before I got up said, boy, it sure would be nice to crawl back into bed and relax until my evening test fish shift. But it was flat calm; the normally thick grey featureless sky had broken up into big poofs of white cumulus clouds on the bluest of blue. The sun, peering through those clouds, energized me. Seeing a rare day like that I had to heed the call. Kayaking conditions don’t get anymore perfect. Plus, it was Sept. 1, the opening day of duck and goose season. I had my stamps and I had a shotgun to borrow. I’d been seeing and hearing huge flocks of ducks and geese for a couple of weeks. I was uncertain I could get close enough in a kayak to shoot one but, heck, it was worth a try and bird, or no, it was still great paddling conditions. Ryan was happy to give me a ride and drop me off somewhere upriver so I wouldn’t have to paddle upstream. Now there was a spring in my step and I bounded up to my tent, grabbing everything I’d need and loading the shotgun, not wanting to waste another minute of the beautiful day.
I loaded my kayak in the skiff. Everyone else was caught up in the excitement of the moment. Gabe, Sam, and Abe came along for the 15 minute drive. Ryan dropped me off at the entrance of a slough I had schemed might be a good one: narrow and too shallow for boats other than kayaks. It cuts off a big bend in the Yukon known as Dogtooth Bend. Everyone left me on a sandbar and wished me luck.
I started paddling down; it was quite shallow even for a kayak with lots of sandbars exposed. After 3 minutes of paddling I saw about 20 geese standing on shore on the left, then a similar number on the right. I wondered how I would get close enough when they were in the wide open and I was in the wide open and geese are notorious for being extremely wary and I wasn’t even attempting to be stealthy. I tried to see how close I could quietly paddle up to them. As to be expected, not close enough. I set my paddle down and grabbed my gun anyway but the group on the left flew off well out of shotgun range. Half of the group on the right did the same but the other half, made the mistake of following the group on my left which meant they crossed within range of my gun.
Without even thinking about it I raised my gun and shot. BANG! A goose dropped out of the sky not far in front of me. Trembling, I set the gun down between my wobbly legs. If I had been standing I would’ve had to sit. My ears were ringing but I didn’t even notice the recoil. I picked up the limp goose from the water, took a deep breath, closed my eyes, threw my head back, exhaled slowly, and said, Thank you. I was awestruck that I had already successfully accomplished what I set out to do. When Sam asked, I said I’d be happy to just get one. So now I had that one. Another might be nice but I didn’t have to worry about failure. I just added two firsts to my lifetime accomplishments. First goose and first time shooting something from a kayak. Adrenalin was surging, my heart was racing. I thought, Wow, how worth it, to feel so truly alive at this moment.
I continued down the slough a little ways but it turned out to be too shallow and actually blocked off. I got out and walked for a little ways looking for geese. Looking back the way I had come a black bear was just emerging from the poplar forest, the blackest of black. He swam across the slough and disappeared in the willows. It was the first bear I had seen in this area.
No geese. I walked back to my kayak and paddled back to the Yukon. I would have to paddle Dogtooth Bend to get back to camp. The slough would’ve been much shorter with greater likelihood of getting another goose, but I wasn’t concerned about the birds because I was happy to just get one. I was concerned about whether I could paddle fast enough to get back to camp by my evening test fish shift. I was missing half a paddle on the left because Ryan broke it recently when he got out of the kayak and used it to support himself. It had already been cracked years ago when I used it as a shovel to dig clams in a very hard substrate down in Kodiak so I wasn’t really mad at Ryan for finishing the act. But right now I sure wished the paddle wasn’t broken. I started taking deep long strokes to build up some speed then shorter steadier strokes to maintain that speed. I could not have asked for a better day for paddling down the Yukon. Sometimes, when it’s windy it’s harder going down the river than it is up, but this day was not like that. The one and only mountain seen in this area, Mt. Marshall, by it’s name sake village to the east, was a blue apparition poking just above the yellowing trees. It slowly moved counterclockwise around me as I paddled and paddled and paddled around the bend. I paddled on adrenalin. I was amazed at what a body can do when it’s jolted into feeling truly alive. Aches and pains disappear, your body pulls through for you.
I approached various gaggles along the way and they all flew off before shotgun range. It seemed to be innate in them. I just enjoyed being around all these birds. The high pitched squeaky honks of the greater white fronteds and the deeper honk of the Canadas. What a pleasure to be here near the Yukon Delta with its vast stretches of wild land full of wild life. And how could such a big silty river in a relatively flat landscape be so beautiful? It just is. Silty or not, it reflects the intricacies of the sky; that’s what makes it beautiful.
I was starting to feel a bit disgruntled at the endlessness of this vast sandbar, although the sand bar did have interests of its own, like various shaped pieces of driftwood that added character to its immensity. Suddenly, though, I caught sight of a moving interest. There was one lonely goose in the middle of the sandbar. Running. And he was running toward me!
What were the odds, one running goose on this vast sandbar moving toward me on this very long river?
I nosed into the beach and hopped out with my gun. The goose tried to fly off but couldn’t; he had a broken wing. Not wanting to waste a shell or shatter the peace on a goose that couldn’t fly I decided I would run it down. The goose veered off from his course toward me and beelined it for the river. I dashed back and jumped into my kayak. I was on a literal wild goose chase. Once again the adrenalin surged through me, I had become a predator, such a rare thing in these modern days. Even as a hunter you don’t quite feel like a predator. I paddled hard after that goose. He with the broken wing, me with the broken paddle. Catching up to him was the easy part. Paddling up along side, not too hard. But then, being the prey that he was and doom being imminent, he had to pull a trick from under his wing. He suddenly dove under just as I was about to grab him. He stayed submerged long enough to pop back up behind my boat. I had to turn my not very maneuverable 17 foot kayak back around with a broken paddle and line up to repeat the whole performance: catch up to the goose, paddle along side, attempt to grab, he ducks. This went on for maybe 10 minutes. Then I tried just herding him along. He was intent on getting back to the beach, perhaps thinking he’d stand a better chance at outrunning me. I thought this could be a possibility so I was reluctant to let him get to the beach. Finally I reasoned I would stand a chance at the boundary, where the water would be too shallow for him to duck but would be too deep for him to run. So this is what I did: I herded him gently toward the beach. When I decided it was the proper depth I quickly paddled up alongside. He didn’t duck. He knew it was over. He accepted his fate as a prey foiled by his predator.
Catching a game animal by human power alone. This was another first that made me feel even more truly alive. I paddled full speed back to camp and made it just in time for test fish. I felt more buoyant than I had when I got up in the morning, having lived my day to the fullest.
3 months later I roasted these 2 geese and served them to friends for a simple Thanksgiving meal, surrounded by fresh potatoes, peas, carrots, and herbs out of the garden, and lingonberries from the woods. Another day, another time of year and the geese who offered their lives made me feel alive once again.
Maureen Chambrone, “Wild Goose Chase”
