A wild goose chase is seldom productive. But careful study of goose behavior accompanied by the patience to hide motionless in plain sight can mean a tasty Christmas dinner if you're waiting where the white-cheeks want to go.

Guidance counselor Frank Nester didn't think my college career would last more than a semester. He suggested that I redeem a scholarship valid at any state university at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale "because you like to hunt and fish."

In the summer of 1969, employment with the Carroll County Highway Department put a serious crimp in my summer catfishing plans, but in the twinkling of an eye, autumn arrived; it was time to report to college, where I would soon learn that life's about more than fishing and duck hunting. Southern Illinois was the focal point of Canada goose hunting on the Mississippi Flyway -- and my life was about to change forever.

In the nearly 40 years since I first learned how to double-cluck into a modified Olt A-50, the pursuit of white-cheeks has taken me pretty much all over North America, but an Allamakee County base camp may be my final roost.

Those years in southern Illinois taught me a great deal about goose hunting and goose behavior under the critical guidance of Gerald "The Bald Eagle" Cain, owner and operator of both the Grassy Lake and B&C Hunting Clubs in Union County. He could look at a dozen flocks of geese several miles away and predict with nearly unfailing accuracy which birds would work into our fields and which would continue to the next fence south and safety in the Union County Refuge.

If Cain came down to the clubhouse by 5:15 a.m. when visiting hunters were getting their pit-blind assignments, you could bet the honkers were going to leave the refuge early; on the other hand, if he didn't show up for black coffee with two sugars before it was time to head out on haywagons to the pits, you could rest assured that no geese would pass over the club within howitzer range before 10 a.m.

Cain had a Ph.D. in practical "goose-ology," his dissertation area being Canada goose behavior; that is still a gold standard for the tactics we can employ in Iowa's corn and wheat fields today, even though the Canadas' population characteristics and migratory patterns have undergone quantum-leap-level changes since the days of paper shot shells and lead goose loads.

GOOSE TENDENCIES
These Canada goose tendencies are confirmed by Iowa Department of Natural Resources waterfowl guru Guy Zenner, who clearly paid attention to wildlife management classes in college and has the diploma to prove it -- in addition to thousands of hours on the ground and in the air tracking waterfowl.

"Weather is the major factor that influences Canada goose hunting during the latter half of the season in Iowa," Zenner said "Weather patterns here and across the rest of the upper Midwest dictate when, where and how the geese migrate, whether they trickle through or migrate en masse at the end of the season."