When we passed the geese, the sound was deafening. A few jumped up and flew to the head of the flock, now only 200 yards from the ditch.

Quayle drove us about 100 yards past the ditch and around a curve. We jumped out, and slowly made our move to the ditch.

Fortunately, the gully had about a 4-foot drop, and the grass at its edge was tall. We spotted an area with a couple of small bushes and headed for it.

In the ditch, another fortunate situation greeted us. In the bottom, there was only a small trickle of water about ankle deep, and we were all wearing knee-high rubber boots.

We got to the ditch, loaded our guns and hunkered down, laughing. It was a comical sight -- unreal, being less than 100 yards from thousands of honking geese.

"OK, now what?" I asked out loud, feeling no need to whisper.

Quayle, laughing the hardest, could barely put words together.

"Get three more shells ready," he said, "because once we come up shooting, they're not going to stay long. We need to space out about 10 yards down the ditch. And when they get within 15 or 20 yards, I'll holler 'Now,' and we'll come up.

"When they fly, shoot and reload as fast as you can. This will be over in a matter of seconds."

We spread out and waited, and it didn't take long. Ten minutes after we made the ditch, the flock was almost on top of us.

I looked down the ditch toward Quayle, waiting for his sign.

"Now!"

We popped up out of that ditch and let loose. Shots were fired. Geese went crazy. More shots were fired, and more geese went crazy.

A total of 18 shots rang out. All but 10 of the geese escaped. The unfortunate 10 were flopping around in the mud near the ditch, none of them in front of me.

I had been laughing too hard to fire a single shot. The sight of 10,000 or so geese rising up in a large, noisy cloud of white was more than I could stand.

The more I watched the geese, the harder I laughed. Only about a couple hundred of the birds really knew what had happened. The rest just flew up when those nearest the ditch did.

Then an amazing thing happened. Part of the flock -- which filled the sky in all directions -- seemed to regroup and circle back.

We dropped back in the ditch and watched as about 2,000 geese peeled off and headed right for us.

"They're coming back to the other side of the ditch," I hollered. "I don't think they know what happened."

Sure enough -- within seconds, the geese were circling in to land on the other side of the ditch.

On their second circle, they passed overhead, well within shooting range.

We added another seven geese to our take, including two I managed to get on the pass.

The flock finally settled in the far corner of the field, well out of range. Ten minutes later, we were back at the rabbit hunt.

"You know what?" Quayle said. "That could be addicting if it were always that easy."