Time to Buzz the Geese!
by Ronald Madsen
Special thanks to my friend Ronald Madsen, a fine pilot I had the pleasure of flying with during our days at Airborne Express/ABX Air for sharing this story. (You kids out there - Don’t try this at home!)
Classic Aviation was my first official job as a commercial pilot, that is flight instructor. It was actually a great time to be a flight instructor. A lot of the GI bill students had pretty much spent all their money. There were a few left who were trying to burn it or lose it. There seemed to be a resurgence of students that wanted to fly. At one point I think I had about 36 students or so. We primarily did PPL (Private Pilot License). If you had a commercial or instrument student you were hot stuff. At the time all my students were pre-solo. I was booked solid and enjoyed getting them soloed and to give myself some breathing room on the schedule.
So, this was way before the internet and personal computers. Apple wasn’t invented yet or Microsoft. A lot of hiring back then was done by word of mouth and a recommendation from a friend who worked at a particular company. There was a service you could subscribe to that had all the company information on where to send your resume to. Airline something…. But like all of us that subscribed to the service I’m not sure if it helped much.
One of my job search methods was to actually look in the Sunday paper. This is when it showed up on your doorstep every Sunday morning. They actually had a lot of advertising, planes, hanger rentals listed back then. I always looked for jobs. None that I was qualified for because they were looking for time in type, minimum hours but I always looked.
I showed up at the airport one morning and one of the students asked me if I had seen the advertisement for a pilot flying cancelled checks in FSD. I said I had not, but checked out the ad and called to inquire about the job.
I called and the Chief Pilot answered the phone. I told him I was interested in the job. He asked me a few questions and about my total flight time and then asked, “When can you start?” I asked him if he needed to interview me and after a long pause he said…., “What’s wrong with you? Do you have a broken leg?” Another long pause… he said … “Well, if you want to come down I’ll be here tomorrow.” Which I did and accepted the job. As it turned out, Kelly the Chief Pilot was one of the best people you could have ever worked for.
That brings us to the “I’m going to buzz the Geese” idea. Probably the first time I actually could have killed myself in an airplane. Piloting airplanes is as they say boring. Hours and hours of boredom followed by seconds of sheer terror. Or stupidity. So, on some runs we would fly from FAR direct BIS. All you had to do is follow the railroad tracks. It’s a straight line thanks to the Great Northern Railroad.
The list of amazing things you get to experience as a pilot is endless but thunderstorms from above, moon rise, moon set, sunrise and sun set, northern lights, comets all of that from above. And you also get to experience the mass migration down the Missouri River flyway in October of thousands upon thousands of Snow and Canadian geese making their way south for the winter. So, on the route from FAR to BIS there was an hourglass shaped sand bar. And on that sand bar was thousands of snow geese taking a break from their migration I guess.
I decided it was time to buzz the geese.
As I approached the sandbar I had miscalculated or misjudged my approach as to when the flock of snowbirds would lift up. I basically had snowbirds flying by me. Just one through the windshield or an engine would have ended me. I was crapping my pants. I pulled back on the yoke to climb as fast as I could to gain altitude. They were literally flying under me, to the side of me, and above me. To my astonishment I hand not hit a single bird! Nothing.
I told myself…..self … God, if you let me live through this I will never……...never, never, never, NEVER do anything as stupid as this again.
The next day, same route…time to buzz the geese.