Double trouble

My phone buzzed with a text from Gary. “Any chance you can get around this eve for few hours? Got a fox that’s taken some geese.”

I knew the ground in question well enough – Gary and I had shot numerous fallow deer there. The smallholding is only a few small fields in a row that fall away to a wood at the bottom, where every evening a good number of deer venture from the wood to graze on his fields and those on the other side of the lane at the top.

The owner and his wife live next to the barn, in which their geese had recently had around a dozen goslings hatch, much to their pleasure. Though they had shut up the barn, they had unfortunately neglected to shut the geese away in their coop within the barn, thinking they were safe enough