JOE KENNECK of Exeter, an avid waterfowler and longtime great bayman, had driven the 385 miles to Aroostook County, Maine, to join me in an early special goose season, at that time a pretty new concept in the non-mirgratory goose management in Maine.

The first day of our hunt was not a kick-butt hunt by any means. We had scouted the area hard the previous day and had seen very few Canada geese, and even fewer in places that we felt safe hunting.

In that part of Maine during the potato, grain and broccoli harvests, often times the farmers don’t want any interruptions to their routine, so being careful on our part included a lot of both soul searching and trying to find the landowners. The practice of farmers living on the ground that they farm had changed years ago, with many farmers leasing land to farm or just living in town. You’re not required to ask permission to hunt but we usually try to get permission. In slack periods between harvesting, you almost never will get turned down. However, sometimes w’re asked questions like, “Can you hunt those things? Can you eat those things?” or “You’re not hunting my deer?”

So after some work and effort, we did find a field right off a busy harvest road that had a small flock of Canadas feeding on a cut grain field in spite of big trucks loaded down with potatoes that kept rumbling by.

On our opening day, the weather dawned warmed but we were cranked up for a good shoot. We set out about three dozen shell goose decoys, laying out among them with a goose decoy sitting on top of us for a bit of camo. The first small groups of geese ignored us but finally a trio of birds dropped down and made a wide swing and were interested, but never finished on them but did provide a shooting opportunity. We managed to knock down one of the big birds and my young (at that time) Lab Balm had a great time chasing it down and bringing it back.

It seemed like hours but it was probably minutes until the next geese looked us over. A pair pulled out of the flock and set their wings and were going to land in the little clearing (we call it the “sweet spot”) in the decoys. Joe dropped one of them with a nice shot while my bird was just kind of wing-tipped and soared into a thick balsam growth that was almost impenetrable. I watched the bird go down well over a hundred yards away and was sure it had landed and was badly crippled.

By then the goose flights were over for the morning and while Joe was picking up decoys, me and Balm were hunting intently for that crippled goose. This was one of Balm’s first trips out goose hunting, but previously he had handled finding crippled birds well. But we just could not find that goose and finally decided that it may have just run off without leaving much scent.

Later that morning, when having brunch at our favorite diner in Caribou, we were in a state of shock at the television coverage of the attack on the World Trade Centers. That event really took the heart and much of the enjoyment out of our day and following week of hunting. We both placed phone calls to the home front to make sure our mates were okay and surviving the scare.

Having lost much of the heart for the hunt, we did hunt that next day at a different place and if my memory is still clear, our only visitors to our decoy set were a few crows and ravens.

Both Joe and I were still pretty bummed-out by 9/11 and decided to cut our hunt short, but we also thought that one more hunt at that first-day field where we lost the crippled goose was worth our while. We did score on a couple more birds and while Joe decided to take Balm for another search for the lost goose, my job was retrieving and putting the decoys back into my van for the trip home.

Just as I was about to give Joe a shout to give it up and let’s get on the way, he interrupted my thought process with a big yelp and the news that Balm had located the lost goose and he, with Balm dancing at his side with the goose in his mouth, put a much better closure on that very sad and memorable three days.

Dick Pinney’s column appears weekly in the New Hampshire Sunday News. Email him at DoDuckInn@aol.com.