Wild goose
is cooked

They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but Chip Lende may beg to differ.

Lende, a moose hunter camped along the upper Chilkat River last week, said he enjoyed a free roast goose dinner Monday, compliments of an ambitious hawk.

Lende said members of his hunting party had bagged a moose and he was packing up their camp near Turtle Rock Sunday when he heard a “woofing” sound overhead.

“I looked up and there’s a hawk with a goose in its talons, except the goose is too heavy for the hawk and they’re falling to the ground. At about 10 feet up, the hawk drops the goose, right in front of me.”

As the goose was dead, Lende figured there was no harm in taking it home. Cooked in wine, it made a fine dinner, he said. “It was real rich tasting. I was hungry. I’d been hunting all day.”

All in all, it was a good weekend for hunting, Lende said. “It’s the land of plenty. We shot a moose that day and a snow goose fell dead at our feet.”

            He said he identified the bird by its black wing tips. It was smaller than a Canada goose, he said. Snow geese are uncommon in Southeast but occasionally pass through during spring and fall migrations, according to Robert Armstrong’s “Guide to the Birds of Alaska.”