Once upon a time in a land where gentle Southern drawls blended hesitantly with harsh Midwestern accents, the Canada goose came to spend the winter. Not just one goose or even a few hundred came, but flock after flock of flapping, squabbling, honking visitors descended upon the three major waterfowl refuges within this magical place. In those days of magnificent abundance, this land was called "The Quota Zone."

Around mid-September the advance guard of the migrating geese floated quietly into the three-county area that comprised The Quota Zone. After the flight from southern Wisconsin -- a journey of nearly 600 miles usually made in just a few days -- the honkers found security, as well as food and water aplenty in each of the sprawling refuges. Year after year, individual flocks and sub-flocks returned to the Crab Orchard, Union County or Horseshoe Lake refuges, dropping to earth in the same corner of the same field every time.

By the end of October, the refuges teemed with migrants, with more due on a regular basis right up to Christmas. When their entire clan had assembled, there would be upward of 600,000 white-cheeked geese in the land of The Quota Zone. In morning and evening, the skies would be lined with rising waves of geese, pouring out of their refuges to scour the surrounding countryside for corn, beans and wheat. Thousands of hungry honkers would pour into a stubble field and clean it out in a few days. Winter wheat stood little chance as soon as the first green shoots emerged from the rich soil of the bottomlands. Those plants not gobbled up were soon destroyed by a million webbed feet packing the earth hard on top of them.

As the geese came each fall, so, too, did hunters who willingly traveled from all parts of the country, and even the world, to play a part in nature's game of survival. The thrill of seeing a handful of huge geese lock wings and work into a decoy spread became a life-long passion for generations of sportsmen. These men, and some women, planned their entire fall schedule around trips to The Quota Zone to hunt and to marvel at the spectacle of Canada geese.

The Quota Zone was so named because each year, a Scientific Wizard in the Kingdom of Department of Natural Resources decreed the maximum number of Canada geese that were to be shot during any season. When the quota set by the Wizard was reached, he forbid the hunt to go further. The hunters did not know why this was so, but the Wizard knew, and he was the one who set the quotas.

To the residents of The Quota Zone, the geese represented both a hypnotic natural resource and a wonderful economic opportunity. These folks hunted the geese, developing skills with regionally crafted goose calls that were unmatched, and established an industry centered on hundreds of commercial daily-fee goose hunting clubs. The clubs that provided outstanding hunting opportunities for visiting sportsmen at the same time were a major source of employment in The Quota Zone.

While some area residents owned the clubs, many others worked at them as drivers, guides, managers and bird cleaners. The "pickin' shacks" were famous goose-cleaning enterprises where hunters' geese were scalded, plucked, gutted, wrapped and frozen, often right in the shack owner's kitchen or front room. A good pickin' shack routinely handled over 100 geese per day at the going rate of about $3.50 per bird.