Chalmer Sinkey, a Seattle-based Fox Movietone News photographer, writes about shooting his yearly story about wild geese at Tule Lake, California in early autumn of 1941.

“An intriguing thought,” thinks the editor, “is the sight of hordes of migratory wild fowl darkening the sky, literally blotting out the landscape.”

But a wild task indeed, is the capturing of this picture on film.

This is where the wild cameramen come in versus the wild geese.

Suffice it to say, that while the birds are there, you do not merely run out, point your camera here and there and call it a day.

There are various and sundry problems, such as: What film to use? How to allow for the grey, crumbling landscape and yet do justice to the brilliant sky that seems eternally filtered by a blanket of dust?

Other inconveniences are a lack of safe drinking water, no accommodations at the local hotels which are all booked up by hunters.

The geese themselves are downright inconsiderate. They fly when you are not expecting them to, and fail to fly when you do.

If you sneak upon them at their feeding spots, they have wise old sentinels that do nothing but watch you, and the minute they calculate that your camera is in range, — WHOOF! they are off like a swarm of bees.

In the heat of the day, they swim placidly on the water, masses of them that look like a mammoth oriental rug, — but, they manage to keep just out of range of your best lenses, and no amount of yelling nor gesticulating will stir them into flight until they are ready to take off.

After traipsing along nettle-strewn dikes all day reconnoitering for good “angles” you dream about them all night, and lay awake to think up ways and means of outwitting a wild goose.

The most tantalizing scene of all comes just before the dawn, and just after the good light has vanished in the evening. Then the sky looks like an aerial four-ringed circus. V’s and W’s, — squadrons and regiments of the birds wheel by, en-route from the water to adjacent feeding grounds. The sound of their plaintive chatter can be heard for miles, but no film is fast enough to capture all of this at its best.

Baffled at some places, you are determined to find other ways and means of getting the unbelievable story on film.

You drive your car frantically over the wheatfields, along bumpy dikes, with camera poised, and one foot ready to leap out at the right photogenic moment. You crawl on your stomach, whiffing aromatic decaying dirt that was once part of the lakebed, curious insects wonder what it’s all about and play “flying trapeze” down your neck, but you grin and bear it, lest the birds find out that you are there and take off before your “shot” is ready.

Eventually though, if you are using just the right background film to bring out the cloud effects, and if your patience holds out, you are apt to get a story that is a knockout.

For there ARE ducks and geese unlimited at the Happy Hunting Ground. Sooner or later, you are bound to get just as wild and canny as the birds, but before you leave, you will get a picture, — a thrilling, unbelievable picture of a rendezvous that has survived the ages.

Thousands of hunters come to Tule Lake for the shooting season, but few ever leave without their bag limits.

[and despite the fact Movietone never used his story, here’s Chalmer’s dope sheet for the version of this story he shot in 1942]