To take full advantage of the drawing power of the Black Hole, Cain maintained radio contact with all the pits and blinds from his vantage point in the clubhouse overlooking the field. He called the shot only when a large flock of birds was fully committed to the center of the decoy spread. At his command, the center pit opened beneath the incoming geese, and the hunters in all the shooting stations fired away as the fleeing birds passed over them. From a distance, the gun volley sounded like a popcorn machine gone berserk!

However, in the early 1990s, the popcorn machine went silent. The goose population of the SIQZ declined from hundreds of thousands to just a few thousand birds. Union County FWA, Horseshoe Lake Conservation Area, Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge and Rend Lake attracted few -- if any -- Canada geese, a situation that persists to this day. Hunters and wildlife biologists alike threw up their hands in despair and proclaimed the SIQZ waterfowl hunting to be a treasured, but lost, resource. Little more than cherished memories survived. It was time to move on.

But no one seems to have told Colin Cain about that. At Crab Orchard Hunting Club (800/93-GEESE), located in Evansville near Crab Orchard NWR, club owner Tom Burns never thought of quitting his goose-hunting operations, either. Todd Gessner, owner of Southern Outdoor Resources Service (618/325-1554) in the Rend Lake area, said he saw the deepening drought of geese, but rather than abandon the hunt, Gessner simply tried to fill the void by guiding hunters for ducks on Rend Lake and snow geese in the nearby fields. While some of the old-time clubs simply closed their doors, others adapted similarly to the changing conditions.

Tom Burns at Burns Goose Club (618/964-1806; Web site www.burnsgooseclub.com) near Carbondale bulldozed up levees to form ponds and marshes, flooded corn plots and began killing mallards.

While it can be said that Mother Nature dealt the SIQZ a bad hand when warming winter temperatures lured the Canada geese away, the same old gal lent a helping hand by encouraging burgeoning flocks of snow and white-fronted geese to move into the nearly empty waterfowl refuges of the SIQZ. This presents a new and challenging type of hunting for visiting sportsmen -- one that can be thrilling because of its diversity.

White-Fronted Geese
A subspecies of the Canada goose, the smaller white-fronted, or specklebelly, goose is considered by many sportsmen to be superior table fare compared with its larger relative.

Specklebellies can be hunted successfully using standard Canada goose tactics, but they also will decoy readily to snow goose spreads because the two species often travel together on the migration routes. Specklebellies have an annoying habit, however, of flying around in fairly large groups, which makes them harder to fool. Nonetheless, singles, pairs and small family groups are not too hard to work for, and taking home some bonus geese -- snows and blues -- is well within the realm of possibility. Snow and blue geese move in and out of the SIQZ throughout the season. Their populations rise and fall unpredictably, but there are always some around.

Canada Geese
Yes, there are still a few Canada geese to be found in the SIQZ. The best bets lie at the clubs around Crab Orchard NWR. The area's hilly land tends to lead snow geese to other pastures, and Canadas and snow geese rarely share the same habitat. Thus, the abundance of snows at Union County FWA and Horseshoe Lake CA probably encourages the area's Canadas to congregate around Crab Orchard NWR.

This separation of habitat is obvious when comparing the Grassy Lake Club with Burns Goose Club. Grassy Lake occupies a broad expanse of Mississippi River bottomland and devotes several areas to large snow-goose decoy spreads that deliver good results for shooters. On the other hand, the land occupied by Burns Goose Club is deeply chiseled by ravines, creating many steep hillsides no right-thinking snow goose would land on. However, the terrain poses no problems for Canada geese. Burns' setups offer large decoy spreads of dark geese on both land and water.