“Later, as the fog lifted and geese flew closer, Perez went to work. Alternating the penetrating clarion of the mystery flute with the seductive cackles of the Fleming, he became a symphony of goose calls, Louis Armstrong with a wooden trumpet.”
The Denver Post
The Magic Flute: Calling all geese
December 4, 1996
Section: Sports
Page: D-12
Charlie Meyers Denver Post Outdoor Editor
Caption: Caption: PHOTOS: The Denver Post/Charlie Meyers With a call to the wild, Arnie Perez trumpets his goose-pit sorcery. For Arnie Perez, the proof of performance comes with geese in the bag. Arnie Perez makes his call of the geese.
SEVERANCE – With the meticulous care of a concert violinist revealing a Stradivarius, the man produced a small case, unzipped it and extracted two long, slender cylinders.
I’d seen this sort of loving ceremony with artists before, such as in the movies, when Minnesota Fats takes out his pool cue or Clint Eastwood cleans his gun. These wooden tubes were goose calls – not the stubby, clumsy kind I had in my bag, but real instruments, the kind called flutes. One carried a brand label, a Dale Fleming; the other mysteriously blank.
“It’s my secret weapon. I got it from somewhere back East,” he nodded in the general direction the sun might rise if not for a dense layer of fog that held much of north-central Colorado in a velvet vise. “With all the competition out here, I need an advantage here and there.”
I’d suspected some sort of intrigue, ever since I’d received a call from a hunting companion a couple weeks earlier.
“I think I’ve found the best goose caller in Colorado, certainly the best I ever heard,” the friend said.
The words would seize the attention of any waterfowl enthusiast, but I was more than that. I also was an outdoor writer in search of a good story. In the parlayance of goose hunting, I had been called in. With apologies to Mozart, I was off to hear The Magic Flute.
Even though it happened 30 years ago, Arnie Perez remembers the first goose he bagged in Colorado for one key reason.
“Those were the days when you had just six tags for the season. I shot this goose and a Division of Wildlife guy came out to the pit to check me. It was Gurney Crawford.”
A lot has transpired in Colorado goose hunting, most of it good unless you’re a golf-course greens keeper, since Crawford (now deceased), a latter-day pied piper of waterfowl, began his grand experiment to attract migrating Canada geese to a Fort Collins lake. Birds by the barely counted thousands now flock to an area stretching far to the eastern plains and hunters multiplied apace.
Nowhere is hunting pressure more intense than around the reservoirs east of Fort Collins, where rivalry for hunting places, and geese, reaches epic proportions. With so many people trying to tempt geese that already have seen, and heard, everything that hunters from Alberta south can throw at them, Perez figures he has little room for error.
The predawn drill begins with decoys, 10 dozen lifelike full-bodies, which he arranges in painstaking detail: a large crescent with the pit as its epicenter, a family group here, a landing party there. Perez examines the set with a critic’s eye, then changes position for another angle.
“No sharp edges. Everything must be soft and rounded, an invitation to land.”
Hidden beneath an immaculately groomed pit cover, Perez speaks his only reservation of the day, one that, from the start, hung over us like, well, a fog. “Geese don’t like to land when they can’t see what’s there.”
Somewhere out in the growing light, a plaintive chorus of goose voices sounded from a neighboring lake, lifted and trailed away to the northwest.
“They’ve already got a place on their minds. We’ve got no chance at birds going off that way,” Perez said.
Later, as the fog lifted and geese flew closer, Perez went to work. Alternating the penetrating clarion of the mystery flute with the seductive cackles of the Fleming, he became a symphony of goose calls, Louis Armstrong with a wooden trumpet.
A broad-faced man with a grizzled beard, Perez puffed his cheeks even wider as he spoke to the birds, crooning, pleading and, as they flew closer, winning them with a chatter of excitement.
Like puppets, the geese spiraled down, as many as three groups working at once. Such is Perez‘s magic that, when a flock of 20 birds had been duped and three shot from it, he managed to convince the group to come back for another pass.
“I’ve learned never to predict what a goose will do.” Perez fills his pit with a torrent of cheerful enthusiasm. “Listen to that sound. There’s nothing like a flock of geese to get your attention, except maybe an elk bugling.”
Perez, 52, works as a painting contractor, but manages to hunt two or three days a week, rising from his Commerce City home at 4 a.m. for yet another trek north. So what does he do about sleep?
“When I’m old and in a rocking chair, I can sleep the rest of my life away.”
Perez offers hunting and calling lessons. You can reach him at 288-9613. SEVEN DEADLY SINS Maestro Arnie Perez advises against these common errors:
1. Decoy fatigue. “I repaint every year, touching up scratched spots and restoring highlights. I think it makes a big difference.”
2. Mismatched set. “I’ve seen whole flocks of decoys with their heads up. Use a blend of feeders and watchers, with lots of feeders for a look of contentment.”
3. Camouflage confusion. “Remember, your pit will be inspected by experts.” Perez takes extra care with his pit cover and, as a final touch, gathers local vegetation to complete the deception.
4. Nervous in the service. “Move very slowly inside the pit when geese are working. I’ve watched other pits through binoculars and been amazed at all the bobbing and weaving. You can imagine what the geese saw from up in the air.”
5. See no evil. “Always be alert for anything that might have gone wrong with your set, such as a decoy tipped over by wind. If the geese keep looking but refuse to come in, something is wrong and you’d better fix it.”
6. Dialing long distance. “Most people shoot when the geese are too far out and either miss or wound birds. I hate to see geese wounded.”
7. Location, location, location. “It’s just like real estate. If you don’t have a field with a good food supply near a consistent flight pattern, you won’t get many geese.”
All content © 1996- The Denver Post and may not be republished without permission.
Send comments or questions to NewsLibrary
