In his epic novel "Chesapeake," James Michener chronicles the lives of four families over 300 years on a north-south sliver of land in Maryland known as the Eastern Shore. Michener's tale draws heavily on facts from that time period and therefore inevitably devotes many pages to waterfowl hunting--and Canada goose hunting in particular. This three-century odyssey perfectly illustrates why the last 10 years on the Eastern Shore have been downright painful: Without goose hunting, the Eastern Shore is hardly a shore at all.

Though today many parts of the country, including sections of Texas and Illinois, claim to be the "Goose Hunting Capital of the World," in the 1970s and 1980s Maryland's Eastern Shore was the original honker heaven. If you were a die-hard goose hunter back then, odds are you spent time in an Eastern Shore pit blind.

"I can't think of a part of the country that we didn't have hunters from," said Ken Schrader, owner of Schrader's Hunting, a guide service that has operated on the Eastern Shore since 1980.

Then in the early 1990s, the Atlantic Flyway Council, citing a drastic decline in the number of migratory Canada geese that winter on the Eastern Shore, encouraged the United States Fish & Wildlife Service to gradually cut back fall goose hunting seasons and bag limits. By 1995, all fall hunting for Canada geese was closed for five years throughout the flyway. States were permitted to hunt only growing populations of resident, non-migratory Canadas in early September and late winter, when migrant birds were not supposed to be present.

But the fall and early-winter season was the Eastern Shore's bread and butter; its closing sounded the death knell for many local guiding operations, motels, mom and pop grocery stores and gas stations.

"Goose hunting ran the economy down here," said Schrader. "A lot of people were put out of business."

USFWS officials estimate that over-hunting and several years of poor nesting conditions on the breeding grounds reduced the numbers of Atlantic Population Canadas from 118,000 breeding pairs in 1988 to 29,000 breeding pairs in 1995.

Larry Hindman, the waterfowl project manager for Maryland's Department of Natural Resources and chairman of the Canada goose committee for the Atlantic Flyway Council, said no breeding ground surveys were conducted before 1988, so the USFWS doesn't know exactly what the breeding population was prior to that year, but the service believes that it was substantially higher than 118,000 pairs.

However, with hunting seasons eliminated and several years of good nesting conditions on the breeding grounds, the Atlantic Population of Canadas began to rebuild through the last half of the 1990s. Hindman said USFWS-led surveys of the birds on their breeding grounds after 1995 showed a steady increase in the number of breeding pairs.

By 2000, the population estimate was 93,000 breeding pairs, a 20 percent increase over the previous year's number. Maryland was allowed to resume fall hunting in 2000, although the season lasted only 15 days and hunters could take only one goose per day.

As the Atlantic Population continued to climb through 2003, when the number of breeding pairs hit 156,900, the season grew in length to 45 days, but the bag limit remained at one goose per day.

Hindman and Schrader both said the growing season enticed some guiding operations to get back into business, but the one-bird limit kept others at bay.

"A lot of outfitters felt it wasn't worth the investment to set up for one goose per hunter," Hindman said.

The one-bird limit was not a problem in the early 1990s, just prior to the five-year moratorium, Schrader said, because the Eastern Shore was still considered the place to hunt Canada geese.

However, by the turn of the century, waterfowl hunters who used to frequent the Eastern Shore had migrated to other hot spots such as Texas and Illinois.

"You can't just switch the light back on and expect everybody to show up again," said Schrader .

With an estimate of 175,000 breeding pairs in the Atlantic Population in the spring of 2004, the USFWS put some meat back into the Maryland goose season for 2004-05.

Hunters were granted a 45-day season split into two sessions: November 18-26 and December 18 through January 29. During the first 25 days of the season, the limit was set at one goose per day. But during the final 20 days, hunters were permitted to take two geese per day, marking the first time since the early 1990s that Maryland goose hunters could bag more than one bird.

"The geese have undergone a remarkable recovery," said Larry Hindman. "It's really a great wildlife success story and we're all anticipating more goose hunting action in the near future."

Hindman said he sees a liberal three-goose-per-day season on the horizon, assuming the population continues to climb as it has over the past decade. Such a season could herald a return to the glory days of the Eastern Shore, according to Schrader. Hunter reintroduction is the issue now.