Buckler was not entirely certain that his readers shared his knowledge and assumptions about rural life. In 'The Wild Goose' … his account of the hunt is written with the voice of one conveying an intricate and esoteric religion to the uninitiated: 'Wild geese had something—well, sort of mystic—about them.'

The stories draw abundantly on the clichés of rural romance; they have a certain derivative charm…. Buckler's themes match well with the concerns of the neo-pastoral revisionists. (p. 86)