During the Korean War years, an Army training officer asked a promising Colorado recruit named Howard Stoker to sign up for an elite sniper school.

The young marksman declined.

He said he would have been uncomfortable, his daughter Susan McAllister remembers, scoping in on another human being from afar.

But where geese, pheasants, elk, bighorn sheep, deer and antelope were concerned, Mr. Stoker had no such qualms.

One of the state's most celebrated hunters, hunting guides and fishermen, he led three Colorado governors into the field, helped World Golf Hall of Famer Hale Irwin bag two geese on his first day out and shared the pleasures of hunting camaraderie with everyone from football quarterback legend Bobby Layne to singing cowboy Roy Rogers.

Mr. Stoker died at his Littleton home Feb. 9, six weeks after being diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. He was 77.

Born Aug. 10, 1931, in Las Animas, he got his first rifle, a single-shot .22, when he was 8. By the time he was a teenager growing up in Haswell, he and a lifelong friend, Scotty Briggs, had developed the peculiar skill that would make them famous: They could call geese with their own voices, producing every sound from a beckoning whisper to a resounding honk. Before long, Mr. Stoker was the perennial favorite to win Lamar's famous Two-Shot Goose Hunt.

With Briggs and a group of friends called The Fraternity, Mr. Stoker guided celebrities, well-heeled businessmen and others to the goose-hunting grounds around Eads, Potter's Lake and Turk's Pond, and to big-game habitats near Rifle and Eagle.

In the 1970s, a TV series called Outdoors With Ken Callaway profiled Mr. Stoker and Briggs and their goose-calling exploits.

"He always respected wildlife," said McAllister, "and in the field he was very funny. Everyone loved being in his company."

That included big-league pitchers such as Rich "Goose" Gossage and Jim McGlothin, singer Mac Davis and three successive Colorado governors - John Love, John Vanderhoof and Dick Lamm.

She remembers her father getting out of his car one day two years ago in suburban Littleton, where a flock of geese was holding up traffic, inflaming motorists' tempers near a Sam's Club store. No problem: The old hunter simply called the birds out of danger.

Mr. Stoker graduated from the University of Denver with a business degree and worked four decades as a regional sales manager for Texaco and Merchants Oil. He married Las Animas native Peggy Jones in 1952. They moved to Denver three years later, where their succession of homes filled up with children, antlers and stuffed animal heads.

Meanwhile, Mr. Stoker taught himself to play jazz piano, guitar, trumpet and almost anything else that could make sound.

"A friend brought an accordion to the house one time," his daughter said, "and 20 minutes later (Dad) was playing songs."

He and his wife also collected antique toys.

Peggy Stoker said there was but one domestic glitch: She and the kids disliked wild game and she refused to cook it. Still, a turkey and a goose usually graced the Stoker family table at Christmas.

In addition to his wife and daughter, of Keystone, Mr. Stoker is survived by another daughter, Sandy Sierra, of Littleton; a son, Walt, of Centennial; eight grandchildren and an infant great-grandson.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Colorado Division of Wildlife, 6060 Broadway, Denver, CO 80216.