We had been hunting Canadas on several hundred acres of corn stubble, land opened by an agreement between the state and the landowner specifically for hunting. There are hundreds of thousands of acres of similar plots stretching across Montana and North Dakota, and, despite the inevitable grumbling that follows any government program, I've found such plots good more often than not. In this case, my friend Bill had done all the legwork, scouting flights and lining up access ahead of time. All the better for lazy me.

We'd driven in on the far side of the field, towing Bill's trailer full of silhouette decoys behind us. Two hours later, we decided to exit through a different gate, one that was closer to the county road. I walked down to open the gate while Bill finished loading decoys, camo netting and a pile of dead geese.

A wing-waver silhouette can help lure in the geese.

Wire gates are a study in shade-tree engineering. They're ubiquitous out West. Although I've probably opened ten thousand, I've yet to find one I liked. I didn't like this one, either.

It was almost as high as I am tall, stretched taut as a violin string, and 20 feet across, bad news from every angle. The worst thing you can do with a wire gate is let it get away; but the moment I pried off the wire latch, it shot out of my hands like a giant slinky, windmilling through the air and landing in a jumble of hopelessly twisted wire and wooden fence posts.

Fifteen minutes of futile detangling attempts later, we heard a door slam and the farmer stalked up, his feed cap yanked angrily over his eyes. He waved me out of the way and began sorting through the strands of barbed wire with his thick fingers, picking them apart one by one. Then he stretched out the gate, jerked his thumb at Bill to drive through and shoved the gate back in my hands before stomping away.

"Sorry," I called after him.

So much for hospitality in the Wild West. Not all the locals are as lively as that guy, but there are plenty of geese that will talk to you if you hit the right notes. The major drainages of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, which run through Montana and merge just over the border in North Dakota, provide natural staging areas in both states. North Dakota has the added advantage of several huge Missouri River impoundments. But it is corn that draws Canadas.

In the west, water is the lifeblood of agriculture. Rivers provide irrigation for water-loving crops like corn and sugar beets, and in December, when the crops have been harvested, the geese arrive -- first by the hundreds, then by the tens of thousands. Of course, they don't all arrive at once and they don't all arrive in the same place, which means that, no matter how many geese there may potentially be, you have to find them first.

Bill and I have an agreement: I take him bird hunting over my pointers and he takes me waterfowl hunting over his retrievers. But Bill isn't living up to his end, because he doesn't own a retriever. I milk his sense of guilt and get one or two goose trips and a handful of duck hunts out of him every season.

Continued -- click on page link below.