Here is a true story I have not shared here in several years. The first paragraph just set's the stage, so stay with it. The 2nd half is worth it.

It was the early 1980s and Ray Roberts was under construction. I had the GWs blessing to hunt as there were no written rules against it. This was before Type II or APHP existed. The lake bed below the dam was only a series of channels and holes from dirt taken to construct the dam. The morning of this hunt there was a terrible deluge of rain and wind. As I was 4 wheeling in to hunt I came up on an old man carrying a large bag of decoys. I don't remember his name, but I remember he was a retired General. I invited him into my Jeep instead of walking and he invited me to hunt with him. He hunted with what I remember as a giant long tom double barrel 10 GA which looked like something from the market hunting days. Duck hunting had been slow with few birds killed so when I saw a lone Blue Goose land in a distant hole, I told the General I was going to leave to make a stalk on it. This was in the area below what is now the State Park at the end of the Dam. Back then there were migratory Canadas and a large flock of White Geese that also wintered in the area so it was common to see them. I remember sitting in my Jeep atop Wolf Mountain, now Island and watching Snow Geese leave roost in the mornings working a flyway along what would now be the west shoreline of the lake. Back to the hunt, when I got to that Blue Goose, it was in the very middle of the pit and the bank all the way around had zero cover. It would not leave as it knew it was safe to just stay on the opposite side of me. I worked my way around to the other side and did an army man belly crawl though the mud and took my shot. The goose just flew to the other side again. I repeated this maneuver again with the same result. After a couple more tries I ran out of duck hunting ammo which was Remington Nitro Mags. In #6 lead as this was before steel shot was required in Texas. I did have some #8 lead on me for rabbit hunting or swatting, so I made one last ditch effort in a long slow crawl and finally got close enough to the Blue Goose to make a head shot as it got up to fly to the other side again, then I waited for it to float into the bank. By the time I got back to the blind, the General had left, leaving me the ducks we killed and a nice note.

Then there was the long drive home where the story get's fun. 35E at the time, probably north of Corinth was one lane due to construction with those concrete barriers on each side. I was driving along in my Jeep in traffic when I hear this loud agonal intake of breath from the goose in the back of my CJ7 Jeep. Next thing I know it has come back to life and is flapping all over inside the Jeep trying to get out and starting to whoop my azz whacking at my head. This is starting to effect my driving so I stop in the middle of the highway which stops all traffic behind me as well. Remember it is one lane with concrete barriers on each side so they can't get around me. I climb into the back of the jeep and after a battle with this not so wounded Goose in a small confined space I finally am able to get my knees on top of it with both of my hands around it's neck. I am trying to break it's neck, but it is like rubber. It was my first goose. I look up and people have started to get out of their cars and are looking in my windows in shock seeing this muddy man on top of a flapping Goose wringing it's neck. So with one hand around the flapping Goose's neck I make my way back to the driver's seat. I start driving steering with my knees and shifting with my elbow as I try to choke this goose down. There still is no place to pull over and I am late to get home anyway. Eventually the goose relaxes and goes limp, but as soon as I let go thinking it has passed, it takes in a breath and it starts all over again. This was repeated at least one more time. The last time I just did not let go. I kept one hand on that gooses neck squeezing as hard as I could until I was almost home to make sure it was good and dead.

I pulled up to Maverick's Trading Post and dropped it off to be mounted. You could still tell with the finished mount that it had it's neck wrung too. Then I went home and got ready for my wedding as I married my first wife later that same day. During that drive It had crossed my mind that the goose might have been a bad omen for the wedding and it was. My first marriage proved to be as much of a disaster as that first goose and was over before the next hunting season started.

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Awesome story! Brightened my morning for sure!

That is a great story.

You can't make stuff like that up.

Hahaha! Great story!

Good read Sniper.

Driving while Gooseing.

Nice read

So you’re saying 35 has always been under construction.

Yes, always

What did the general's note say?

awesome story, i was busted out laughing.

Man that was 30 something years ago. I have no idea. Just a nice note, "enjoyed hunting with you, leaving you the ducks, ...." bla bla bla.

More Ray Roberts trivia. The young guys on the forum won't remember it, but the older ones will. Remember the Don't Mess with Texas Commercial from the 1980s with Randy White and Too Tall Jones? Just before my hunt at the Powderhorn in October I spent a week Redfish fishing with the man who had been the filmographer director of that commercial. That comercial was filmed on the road near the Ray Roberts Dam. He wanted trees in the background to beautify the road more. So they bought a bunch of trees, but since it was only for the commercial they were all cut off from the root balls, post holes dug and the trunks just dropped into the holes. While they were dropping these rootless cuttoff trees into the post holes, he said a rancher/farmer type pulled over and kept trying to explain to them that it was not supposed to be done that way. The trees were of course pulled back up and hauled off to be discarded after the filming was over.

What a great story! Thanks for sharing. I had a similar experience with far less traffic impacts. I went to graduate school at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff for fisheries biology. Well all of us guys liked to hunt as there was an abundance of waterfowl wintering in SE Arkansas. We had asked for and received permission to chase snow geese on some private land near Stuttgart during the conservation season. Well a big group of us grad students staked about 1000 Texas rags out dark and early and had a few birds to shoot at. Many of the birds were landing in a field adjacent to where we were set up. I had to leave early so the boys asked if I could go bump the live birds out of that field so as not to attract later flights to the wrong field, etc. I drove around and was able to put a sneak on them on the edge of the field hugging a grain silo on the farm. I got 5 shots off and knocked down 6 geese. Well, as you might imagine, I wounded a few. I set off to wring necks to finish them off. Thought I had finished the job....until I started driving back from just outside of Stuttgart to Pine Bluff ~45 minutes or so. I looked in the rear view mirror of my old Ford Bronco II to see a white phase snow goose sitting up and looking around. It seemed like every bump I hit, he would flap his wings and spread a little more bird doo around the cargo area in the Bronco II. I called a buddy that couldn't make the hunt and drove straight over to his house and then we got some tools to finish the job. I can only imagine the horror of the onlookers wondering what kind of fool would drive around with a live goose in the back of his truck. We all had a good laugh about it...and then laughed again as we ate that less than awesome goose. Grad students don't make any money so we ate a lot of what we could shoot or catch. Good times! Thanks again for the reminder of some past adventures.

My Father was a high school and track star in Sayre Oklahoma. A very long time ago when times were different. A few days before he passed, he told me a story about one of their weekend football games. During the game, a flock of white geese landed in the field next to the football field. The game was suspended and all the players and spectators ran to their trucks to retrieve shotguns. He said there was a deep ditch that ran through the middle of the field. The entire group snuck down this ditch until they were next to the geese and on signal all rose up like a company of soldiers making a charge out of a trench and started shooting. He said there were geese falling everywhere and cripples running all over the place. Basically the entire town, women, and children where chasing the cripples around killing them. Then the guns were put up and the game continued.

Oh my! That sounds hilarious! I would have loved to have seen some video of that. I'm in my mid-to-early-40s and can recall shotguns being in racks in pick-ups in the parking lot at my high school in Kansas. Different times for sure.

That event would have taken place in the late 1940s.

At my high school guns were usually reserved for after-game fights. People kept saying knives and chains only...knives and chains only..

nice story.