No living animal on earth has so much downright fun as a wildfowler’s dog.
H. Albert Hochbaum
There are a couple of truisms about old dogs and old duck hunters. One is that if you are a twelve-year-old Labrador retriever, the cold, dark water of late November looks a little less inviting than it once did. The other is that if you’re a hunter who has reached the wrong side of sixty, it’s tempting to hit the snooze button when the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. That may explain why Jenny the Lab and I were running a little late on our way to the Missouri River north of Helena, Montana, the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
A few days earlier, it had snowed four inches, and the weather forecast for the weekend promised a cold front approaching from the north. The migration map on the Ducks Unlimited website showed increasing waterfowl activity at points north and west. The hunt had been planned carefully, the river scouted, and the little duck boat loaded in the pickup the day before. Gray-muzzled Jenny would ride in the truck cab with me, her crate in the back displaced by the duck boat. The drive to the river would take an hour; unloading the boat, stowing the gear, crossing to the island, and setting out the decoys, another thirty minutes. A check of the regs showed legal shooting time to be 7:13 a.m. A 5:30 departure should have us set up on the island with time to spare.
It would be our third run to the river in the past ten days, and so far we didn’t have much to show for our efforts. The first outing had been a Keystone Kops affair that could have resulted in a few mallards in the bag … if the old dog had kept still when the first bunch flew over, and if the old hunter hadn’t been rearranging the decoys when the only other flock of the morning dropped in.
The second trip had produced two greenheads, one a single that came directly to the decoys and another that passed overhead low enough for a shot with the modified choke of my over/under. A third bird had swung just wide of the blocks at the edge of shotgun range, and I let him pass. An air temperature of fifteen degrees, a windchill factor around zero, and a strong Missouri River current add up to trouble for an old dog chasing a crippled duck.
The drive to the river through the moonlit landscape gave me time to reflect on recent events. A year earlier, during a late-season pheasant hunt in eastern Montana, my heart had suddenly commenced an alarming out-of-rhythm beating. By the time my hunting partner could get me to the nearest emergency room twenty-five miles away, my arms and legs were numb, and I was gasping for air. I thought I was having a heart attack. Fortunately, it wasn’t a heart attack but something called atrial fibrillation: a rapid, irregular beating of the heart caused by an electrical malfunction in the atrial chambers. Spending a night in the hospital hooked up to a heart monitor and an IV drip isn’t conducive to sleeping, and I spent a lot of time thinking about things I used to take for granted, including hunting, and wondering what the future might hold.
During the night, my heartbeat returned to normal and subsequent tests by a cardiologist showed my heart to be okay. The causes of atrial fibrillation are varied and not completely understood—heart defects, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other medical problems can all play a part. Since I suffer from none of these, I fall into the category of “cause unknown.” When I asked the doctor about hunting, he said, “Sure, go ahead. There’s no point in putting your life on hold. You could have another attack, but if you sit around waiting for it to happen, you’ll be letting it defeat you.”
Now that’s my kind of doctor.
About a month after my trip to the hospital, Jenny’s abdomen began to swell, and she suddenly lost her appetite. A trip to the veterinarian’s office confirmed the presence of an internal mass. The vet operated immediately and removed her spleen, along with the eleven- pound tumor attached to it. It was touch and go for the next few days, and Dr. Steve wasn’t overly optimistic about the outcome. But on the fifth day, he called and said, “Jenny’s doing a lot better today—she’s definitely turned the corner. You can take her home this afternoon.” With luck, he said, Jenny would have more hunting trips in her future.
Jenny’s soft whine brought me back to the present. She always lets me know when she first smells the river, and it amazes me how far away that olfactory miracle takes place. Five minutes later, I arrived at the roadside pullout where I planned to launch the boat and got an unpleasant surprise: Another truck was already parked there. My heart sank. I had been so sure of having this spot all to myself that I hadn’t bothered with a fallback plan. In the moonlight, I could see that the mid-river sandbar that had been lined with loafing ducks and geese a few days earlier was now devoid of birds. Clearly, the other hunter had rousted them as he made his way across the river. Cursing the treacherous snooze alarm, I considered my options. Several spots would take half an hour or more to reach, putting me on the river past first light.
I decided to check a side channel a few miles upriver that can be accessed without a boat. I knew that on a Saturday morning chances were good that another hunter or two would already be set up there, but I figured it was worth a try. To my surprise, there were no vehicles at the parking spot when I got there. I quickly gathered my decoy bag, shells, and gun and started the quarter-mile trek across the snowy stubble field to the channel, Jenny at heel. As we grew closer, I could hear the contented chatter of mallards, a good omen. Several dozen ducks vaulted into the air at our approach, circled once, and disappeared into the twilight. Maybe Jenny and I would get a chance at some ducks this morning after all.
Before I could finish setting out the decoys, the whicker of wings overhead told me some ducks had already returned to scope things out. I hurriedly placed the last few decoys and checked my watch: 7:15. Time to slip into the willow-stick blind, one of several I’d built earlier in the year, and get ready. I hadn’t waited more than a few minutes when a duck appeared overhead; I could tell by its reedy whistle it was a drake mallard. Anxious to make the trip at least a marginal success, I took the overhead shot rather than waiting to see if he would circle and pitch into the decoys. He folded in the air and hit the water with a splash about thirty yards downstream. As Jenny charged after him, I noted with consternation that his head was up and he was swimming for the main river about 200 yards away.
The duck dove as Jenny closed in. She tried to catch him but came up coughing, circling the spot where he’d gone under. When he popped up again a few seconds later, she nabbed him, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I know the bald eagles on the river make short work of cripples, but wounding and losing the first bird of the day—or any bird, for that matter—casts a pall on an otherwise perfect day of waterfowling.
I thought about the time a few years back when I shot a drake mallard in this very channel and didn’t realize until I got home and started plucking it that it had only one leg, the other just a stub that had healed cleanly above the knee. I pictured a hungry northern pike or snapping turtle dining on leg of mallard somewhere in the bird’s past. Ducks use their feet in many ways—for swimming and walking, of course, but also for steering, balancing and braking during flight. The one-legged bird appeared healthy, but not rolling in buttery fat like its mates. I felt a little sad about shooting this valiant bird, but life with one leg cannot be easy for a mallard—maybe I spared it a gradual and painful decline.
As Jenny brought in the bird I’d just shot, a wedge of ducks appeared over the main river. I had the duck call to my lips when I noticed they were swinging my way. Better be quiet, I thought, and dropped the call. When Jenny saw me raise the call, she perked up her ears and began to tremble with excitement. “Sit!” I hissed, remembering how her lapse in manners had cost me a duck a week earlier. The flock was now headed straight for us, wings cupped and paddles down. As they passed over the decoys, I picked a drake and pulled the trigger. The duck crumpled in a way that told me it was well hit. It kicked its feet a few times and lay still.
“Dead bird, Jenny, fetch!”
The next hour saw a succession of mallards, mostly singles and small groups, appear on the northern horizon and arrow down from the heights directly to my channel, as if drawn by some mysterious magnetic force. I am always amazed at how quickly they can transform from specks in the sky to plump, bigger-than-life mallards hovering over the blocks when they have their minds made up to land. I’m no virtuoso on the duck call, so I love days like this when I can quack and chuckle to my heart’s content with no fear of an off note sending the only flock of the day winging south.
Whether these birds had found safe harbor in the channel for many days or whether they were just now arriving from the wheat fields of Alberta, I do not know. But one thing was certain: These mallards, with their red-orange legs and late-season plumage, liked the look of my decoys. I relaxed and shot well, probably because I knew that if I missed a bird it didn’t matter—another would be along to take its place.
After Jenny retrieved greenhead number five, I checked my watch: It read 8:30. The Pacific Flyway limit on mallards is seven, but we had plenty of ducks. I decided to give it fifteen more minutes, then pick up and go home. I was watching the antics of a weasel scampering along the bank, pure white save for the black tip of its tail, when a dozen mallards suddenly materialized upriver. I blew a friendly hail call. They swept low over the stubble field across the channel, wheeled, gained altitude, and swung high over the blind, white underwings flashing in the sun. A short time later they were back, this time on set wings. I took the lead drake first, saw him fold, and then swung hard on a bird flaring sharply upward. I hit the trigger as the barrel passed his head, and he landed with a thump on the far side of the channel.
Jenny retrieved the first greenhead, rested for a moment, then swam across the channel and found the second. She brought it to me, exhausted but happy, and shook water in my face.
For old dogs and old duck hunters, second chances are the sweetest of all.