At midday recently along a tidal gut on the Eastern Shore, waterfowl hunting guide Dennis Dunn made his way around a thicket and edged downhill toward the shoreline. Dry leaves rustled, a dead branch snapped underfoot and a few hundred Canada geese noisily took flight.
"Beautiful. But it ain't nothing like it used to be," Dunn said wistfully as the geese arced away to the northwest and their honks reverberated across the marsh.
"When I lived out by open water, there were rafts of geese as far as you could see. A powerboat would pass through them heading for [Kent] Narrows, and the birds would startle, rise and settle again in waves. I don't know if we will ever see it like that again."
The second split of Canada goose hunting season opens Wednesday, and, according to federal surveys and state waterfowl managers, there certainly are not the numbers of birds around that there once were.
In fact, the number of migratory Canada geese in Maryland remains considerably more than 100,000 birds below the state's target population of 400,000.
Because of the low number of migratory Canada geese in the state since the late 1980s, the hunting season has been split into one-bird and two-bird segments to limit the kill. The one-bird segment will run through Dec. 30, and the two-bird segment will extend from Dec. 31 through Jan. 14.
The 400,000 target population, according to the state's Canada geese management plan, would offset poor reproduction years and allow a return at least to the two-bird-per-day limit throughout the hunting season.
In the past couple of years, especially since the goose population reached a 30-year low of 234,000 at midwinter of 1993, there has been talk of further hunting restrictions.
"A lot of guides and outfitters would hate me for saying this," one experienced outfitter said recently, "but why not a moratorium on goose hunting? Just shut it down until the birds recover."
Goose hunting is a tradition in much of the Maryland tidewater area, and especially on the Eastern Shore, where a long-standing balance has been maintained among outfitters, guides, landowners and hunters.
In the simplest terms, outfitters and hunting clubs lease hunting areas from landowners, who in turn work their corn, soybean and wheat to help attract geese so that hunters have a better chance.
Without a hunting season, outfitters couldn't afford to lease land, landowners would work their properties differently and the trickle-down economics that help support gas stations, sporting goods stores, restaurants, hotels and motels would dry up.
What was estimated as a $40 million annual industry during the three-bird days a decade and more ago would wither away as well. Between 1978 and 1986, the Canada goose population in Maryland averaged 518,000 birds.
"It is easy enough for someone to say that a moratorium would work," said guide Bill Joyce. "But once you lose a lease on prime land, you probably would never get it back."
Joyce and many other guides follow a simple formula for helping the geese and maintaining decent hunting through the split seasons.
"You have to know which birds to call in," Joyce said. "There is no sense in bringing in dozens of birds when you can only take two or four out of them for your party.
"We like to concentrate on singles, pairs or the smallest groups. That way, there is less danger of crippling birds by shooting into large groups, and you don't educate as many, either."
The education of Canada geese, acknowledged as smart birds by guides and hunters, is a matter of inadvertently teaching them where hunters lie in wait along their routes to food, water or rest.
"You shoot into a big group early in the season," Joyce said, "and those are birds that you won't get your shots on later in the season."
Larry Hindman, head of Maryland's migratory game bird program, said recently that the hunting season, even with the majority of days having a one-bird limit, is something of a double-edged sword.
"The goose population is at the level it is largely because of poor recruitment [reproduction] over a number of years," Hindman said. "And when the birds do come south to the Chesapeake region, even at reduced harvest levels, we are taking too many breeding-age birds out of the population."
And if the kill were more efficiently directed at juvenile birds, then hunters could be taking away the future, because it takes three years for a bird to reach sexual maturity.
With average reproduction and restricted hunting seasons, Maryland's Canada goose numbers could reach the target figure late in this decade or early in the next century.
But whether anyone ever again will see rafts of geese "startle, rise and settle again in waves," as they did in the late 1970s and early 1980s, remains an open question.
GOOSE, DUCK SEASONS
CANADA GEESE
Wednesday-Dec. 30: Second split of Canada goose hunting season. Bag limit one, possession limit two.
Dec. 31-Jan. 14: Third split of Canada goose hunting season. Bag limit two, possession limit four.
DUCKS
Tuesday-Jan. 14: Third split of duck hunting season (canvasbacks open Jan. 7-14 only). Limit: three ducks per day, a take that may include no more than one mallard hen, one pintail, two wood ducks, one redhead, one fulvous tree duck, one mottled duck, one black duck and one canvasback (when in season).