Photo by Holger Jensen.

Too bad that over the years so many young people haven't realized just how smart their parents are. I was one of those kids who think that they know everything. Nothing my parents ever said made any sense to me. I just knew that there was a better way -- and that way was my way.

Thankfully, my hardheadedness didn't get me killed. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was always walking a tightrope of temptation that should have done me in.

So typical of a youngster, my naïve attitude was something like that of the young bull looking out from his pen at all the cows in the field below. To an older bull in the same pen he said, "Hey, Mr. Old Bull! Let's run down the hill and make friends with one of those cows."

The old bull had been around the block a time or two, though, and thoughtfully responded, "Naw -- let's walk down there and make friends with all of them."

With age comes wisdom. It's amazing how smart my parents seem to get the older I get. Smart old people just don't do the same stupid things as young dumb people. That's why their insurance rates are lower.

The same could be said for geese.

Twenty years ago, Capt. Erik Rue of Calcasieu Charter Service used to be able to kill as many geese as the law would allow over a couple of spilled crates of baby diapers. It's not like that today, though: Geese, snows mainly but specklebellies too, are getting harder to kill. Rue's theory is that both species of geese are living longer, and are thus just a little bit wiser.

"I think the main reason geese are getting more wary is because of all the increased hunting pressure," said Rue. "Hunting pressure had a tremendous affect on duck hunting, and now we're seeing it with the geese."

It only stands to reason that if more people are hunting geese and exerting the same effort they used on ducks, the geese are getting shot at with increasing frequency every year.

"What we've got now are geese that have been through the gauntlet," Rue said. "Those that made it through learned from what they saw."

It's getting hard enough to just take your two specks, but the limit of snows that fluctuates from 10 to 20 on any given year is getting downright impossible to fill.

"You can shoot more snows because the limit is higher," Rue said, "but it's not very often that you actually kill your limit. And to make it worse, there are thousands of them around. The problem is that they have gotten supersmart. The same can be said for the specks. They're not as tough as the snows right now, but you can see them trending that way."

Rue also explained that one of the trends he's seen around Lake Charles is indicative of the increased interest in geese: more hunters getting caught up in buying specialized gear just for geese.

"In my area, it seems like more people are getting worried about call and decoys and guns and blinds . . . it's the same kind of effort usually reserved for duck hunters," Rue said. "I'm primarily talking about increased interest in the specks, but you can see it with the snows, too."

Rue also figures that hunters' having suffered through sub-par duck seasons has added to the new interest in geese. If the ducks aren't there, and the geese are, it's only natural that hunters migrate towards the latter.

GLORY DAYS GONE
Rue can recall the glory days of goose hunting -- just 15 or 20 years ago. Back then, hunters didn't have to do very much to shoot some birds. Put out some white in a field and hunker down to hide, and you'd have geese falling in all around you.

"They were all pretty stupid back then," Rue said. "We still get some birds that attack our spread, but they're mostly young, dumb birds, the ones not following the advice of the older and wiser birds."