So he started sketching. After a while, he showed his drawings to a plastics manufacturer. "It's nice," the guy told him. "Who's going to build it?"
"You are," Maher answered.
Birds of a feather: Tom Hatfield in his giant goose decoy.
Related Content
More About
"No, I'm not," the man said, passing on phone numbers for two sculptors. The first one who answered Maher's call was Gary Staab, a world-renowned, Golden-based artist who sculpts dinosaurs and other prehistoric wildlife for such customers as the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic.
At first, Staab was wary. "I know a lot of goose hunters," he says. "And most are pretty...weird." But Maher soon convinced him that his project was legit, and Staab eventually agreed to do the job. Plastics and production complications delayed the launch of a fully operational blind last year. But by this fall, everything was in place.
The final product turned out slightly different than Maher had originally envisioned. In the beginning, he'd pictured the big goose operating like an avian version of a bachelor-party cake. The hunter would sit inside a hollowed-out shell that resembled a napping goose. When the real geese hoved into range, he'd release a latch and the blind would split open down the middle. Then, like a dangerous dancing girl hired to entertain at a Cabela's Christmas party, the hunter would leap out, shotgun blazing.
The thin shell proved too flimsy for this concept to work, however, so Maher tinkered with the design. Ultimately, he settled on cutting two large squares out of the goose's back and hinging them like saloon doors -- a move both practical and aesthetically pleasing. "When you open the doors slowly, it's just like a goose opening its wings," he explains. "It's natural, and they just keep on a-coming."
A hole was cut into the back of the goose's head so that the hunter could look out; a folding steel chair with its legs sawed off was placed inside. The whole deal was set on a Lazy Susan that rested on a platform; another hole was cut in that so that the hunter's legs stuck out. By moving his feet from side to side, he could rotate the goose in a circle.
"It really is the cutting-edge of goose blinds," Maher says.
On the last day of November, Maher drove up to Fort Morgan. He'd arranged to meet up with another giant-goose-blind developer, Tom Hatfield, who'd begun tinkering with his own oversized goose-shaped blind about five years ago.
Like Maher, Hatfield has been forced to make improvements as he's gone along. His first model was practically medieval, an eighty-pound mound of vaguely goose-colored papier-mâché and chicken wire. "It was real ugly," he admits. "When I put it in the field, it looked like a pile of dirt with a head on it. Worked pretty well, though."
A couple of years ago, Hatfield decided to go to a vacuum-formed plastic shell, too. The current version is about nine feet long, although he says he'd like to make it bigger. The hunter sits in a chair with his head leaning against the back of the goose's neck, facing tailward; his feet rest inside the thorax. From a not-so-far distance, it looks as though the hunter is driving the wrong way inside an MG that happens to be painted like a Canada goose.
Hatfield insists the design works just fine as long as the hunter stays completely still. Privately, however, Maher is dubious of his competitor's claims. "He says it works pretty good, but I don't know," he says. "The geese can still see the hunter sitting there."
That night, Maher and Hatfield are joined by a friend of Hatfield's, who has driven in from the foothills to hang out with his buddy and bag a few geese using the latest in goose-blind technology. While the friend professes to be enthusiastic about both gargantuan geese, he is especially energized by the possibilities of Maher's design.
"You could add some padding inside," he says excitedly over dinner. "That'd be really nice. You add a heater, that's even better. And if you had some cup holders, I'd be home. It would be like sitting in my living room and opening the ceiling with a remote control and shooting the geese as they flew over my La-Z-Boy!"
The hunt begins at four the following morning. About 300 decoys are scattered across an old cornfield east of town, at even intervals throughout the spread. Then Maher and Hatfield set up their monster geese. The blinds tower over the regular decoys, looming beside the life-sized models like outsized Marphan-inflicted adults visiting a nursery school. The hunters climb inside and wait.
At about 7 a.m., the first geese begin flying by, their nasal blasts breaking the frigid morning air. The first wave, a classic 'V,' soars directly overhead. A few curious scouts take a cursory look at the odd, unevenly sized spread below -- and take a pass. So does the next wave. And the next.
In the following hour, thousands upon thousands of geese check out the spread. And reject it. It soon becomes painfully obvious that, at least on this morning, the discerning waterfowl of Morgan County will have nothing to do with their giant look-alikes. None drop close to shotgun range. Instead the birds choose to congregate on a field a half-mile away, which by nine that morning is looking like a goose Woodstock.
At 10 a.m., Maher and Hatfield decide to pack it in. The giant birds hang out of the men's pickup trucks like dismantled carnival rides. "Oh, well," says Maher. "At my age, it's just nice to be out there in the middle of the birds. It's a thrilling experience."
