East Lake - By Bob Fringer

Story By Bob Fringer

The enchantment of goose hunting has been in my blood since the time I shot my first Canadian Goose during the early 1950s. Since that initial episode on a lonely meadow off the Passadumkeag Stream in Maine, I have been infatuated by those wonderful airborne creatures of flight.

Many years later, I began to hunt them with more interest . Over-wintering populations of geese in New Jersey had increased and I had the opportunity to hunt them in a number of different areas in the State. The extended Canadian Goose season allowed me to be in the fields and marshes before and after the normal duck season. In addition. I had teamed up with a friend, Fred Stucky, who had recently built a quaint hunting cabin, modeled after a southern tenant farm house, on a beautiful tidal marsh off the Cohansey River near the Delaware Bay.

We had the goose hunting bug and there was no end to our determination to hunt those birds. Early in September, I received a call from a friend who worked for the Agricultural Extension Service in South Jersey. He called to see if I would be interested in leasing a hunting blind on East Lake, a small body of water centered in an area which had several thousand acres of field corn. I enthusiastically jumped at the chance because East Lake had the reputation of holding great numbers of Canadian Geese each winter.

The cost of the lease was not prohibitive if it were spread among several other hunting buddies. The deal was made and we had the sole hunting privileges to East Lake. Look out geese here we come! Our first order of business after paying for the lease was to camouflage the one and only blind on the lake. The structure was built out in the water about 15 yards from the shore line. It was rock-solid, had a roof, and would hold 4 hunters with ease.

Early in October, Fred and I loaded my canoe on my Jeep and drove our vehicles down to East Lake . It was a beautiful early autumn day with temperatures in the 60s. We unloaded my canoe and carried it down to the lake’s edge. After we cut arm loads of brush and small trees, we put them in the canoe and paddled out to the blind. We very carefully tucked, pushed and tied all the vegetation to the outside of the blind.

Having accomplished all that work, we paddled out to the front of the blind to view our handiwork. The blind looked great; it blended in with the entire shore line. We paddled back to the blind and went inside to make sure that we had good visibility to shoot all incoming birds. Everything seemed perfect.

As we turned around to leave, we noticed something was wrong. Our canoe was missing! Much to our dismay we saw the canoe serenely drifting away from the blind. It was about 25 yards out from the blind and slowly heading toward the other side of the lake. We had neglected to tie up our sole means of getting back to the shore. Fred and I exchanged glances. I could see from the gleam in his eyes that old Fred had no intentions of getting wet that day. I reluctantly agreed to wade back to shore, get in my Jeep, drive over to the other side of the lake and retrieve the canoe while Fred would watch from his dry perch in the blind.

I took off my shoes and unloaded my pockets prior to climbing out of the blind. As I slowly inched my way down the ladder the cold water began to penetrate the inner core of my body. The water was only about 2 feet deep but the bottom was composed of about another foot of rotting leaves and branches which had accumulated over the past 50 years or so. Things were getting a little testy by the time the water had reached the top of my thighs. I very carefully navigated through all the debris underfoot. I certainly did not wish to fall in that water! Finally, I reached the shore line and headed to my Jeep. The warm October sun felt good on my shivering, drenched body.

As I drove to the other side of the lake I figured my wading efforts were over. I was wrong! Much to my chagrin, the canoe had floated across the lake but it was now lodged in the brush and stuck about 25 yards from the shore line. It was wading time again! I went through the same process of slowly wading in the water with the same old muck underfoot. However, this time the water was up to my shirt pocket and the temperature hadn’t gotten warmer! I finally reached the canoe and with a death grip on its side I pulled it back to the water’s edge. I stepped into the canoe and paddled it back over to the blind where Fred sat--warm and dry.

After returning to my Jeep, I was able to shed my wet, soggy clothes and change into some warm ones. It had been some afternoon! From that day on I made certain that there were lines on both ends of the canoe and that they were securely tied to something near at hand.

As an aside, we shot less than six ducks from that blind and never downed a goose. The geese continued to use East Lake but always left before the legal shooting time began and returned to the lake immediately after the legal time expired. So much for East Lake! The hunting was poor and the wading even worse.

Bob Fringer - 11/05/02