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This is a funny but true story about geese hunting.

'Murga' our old fisher/shikari/driver/jeep mechanic, may his soul rest in peace, told me loads of stories as a kid. These stories were filled with lots of insight into 'the good old days'- when the lakes were grey with waterfowl, fish were as big as 'arms lengths' and deer were as numerous as 'cows on the streets'- as well as many tips and tricks that one only learns with experience.
We all know about hunting waterfowl with decoys. Many of you might know that if one doesnt have a decoy for a goose, one can use newspaper, float it on the surface of a waterbody/ a field of gram legumes and geese either land or come down to within few feet of it enabling the hunter to shoot them on the wings (easier when they are at the 'trough' of the flight.)

This we kids knew. But 'murga' had an even better tip for a novice; one that had taken him years to discover: one must use only english newspapers; Times, indian express and not hindi(local language) newspapers else it wouldnt work.

His explanation was simple. Geese were from 'vilayat' (Indian name for england) and the reason they landed was to read the newspaper and as they were from vilayat, they couldnt read hindi so wouldnt care to come near a hindi paper.

Dramatic as it may sound, the bag was indeed very poor on hunts where hindi newspapers were used and he had years of experience to back up his theory.

Now even my child-mind knew that:
1 Geese cant read.
2 'Vilayati'(english) geese dont come to India but russian etc do. Vilayati go to southern parts of their respective longitudes.
3 Geese dont land to 'read' but because the newspaper acts as a decoy.

My child mind swore to investigate the cause of this perplexing phenomenon but most village/city shikaris/observers vouched for the superiority of english newspapers in bagging geese.

Finally an observant, intelligent,educated shikari told me that 40 years ago, the hindi newspapers were printed on poor quality paper which was not white but yellow in colour. Yellow paper with black print (resulted in muddy) was not as close as white paper (delhi printed english papers) with black print (resulted in grey) in mimicking the 'decoy effect.
And hence the better bag.
With time the quality of paper used in hindi newspapers improved and has been white as far as i can remember so probably i couldnt figure it out and it took me many years to figure out the mystery.

Murga was old by then and i didnt have the heart to shake/ destroy his core beliefs about baiting the 'vilayati' geese with reading material. He went to his grave secure in the knowledge that he had perfected the art of 'baiting' geese.

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Born to hunt, forced to work

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