On to the story…When I bought my Cockers, I was anticipating using them for upland birds. I had never hunted ducks in my life, and didn’t have a strong desire to hunt them. However, after I moved to Texas it became clear that I would need to expand my hunting interests if I was going to keep my Cockers busy. So, I have started to dabble (no pun intended) in duck hunting.
My very first morning that I went duck hunting I went to a public lake not far from my house. I took Rocky with me and left Macy at home, figuring that Rocky would do a better job of sitting still. Even though he’s the pup, he is a more patient dog than Macy, generally speaking. At first light a few ducks flew by, but they were just out of range and not interested in my calling. For the next two and a half hours, we (we being Rocky and myself) didn’t hear or see any more ducks. Then, suddenly, there was a series of shots that came from a small slough that was behind me. Bang! bang! bang! …pause… bang! bang!…longer pause….bang! bang! bang!
Rocky was pretty excited about all of the shooting, but I made him sit quietly. A moment later I could hear the hunter walking in the brush about 60 yards behind us. I hollered out to him that I was going to walk up his way, and then approached him. Apparently a lone drake Mallard had landed in his spread and he had opened up on it. However, he was only able to wing it, and it began swimming across the water headed for the shore further up from me. He continued shooting at the duck as it climbed up the bank, but it was too far out for his shot to have any effect on the duck.
We searched up and down the bank looking for the duck, but couldn’t locate it anywhere. Rocky was staying pretty close to me, but I think that was mostly to do with running intro a stranger in a strange place; it made him a little uneasy. However, as I talked to the hunter more, Rocky became more comfortable and started to hunt around more. After ten minutes of looking around, we decided the duck had successfully eluded us. We were standing on the bank of the lake talking about hunting in generally, when the other hunter exclaimed, “your dog has him!” I looked over to see Rocky about 25 yards away from me coming out of the brush with the Mallard hanging out of his mouth! Apparently Rocky had found the trail and had tracked the duck back into the brush where he had been able to pin the it down and retrieve him back to me (and deliver to hand, by the way).
So, as it stands right now, Rocky has been a much more successful duck hunter than I have. However, his hunting prowess has earned me an invitation to go hunting with this hunter (who clearly knows more about duck hunting than I do), so I’m not going to hold his success against him. Even though I wasn’t able to actually shoot a duck that morning (or on a couple of subsequent mornings), it was totally worth waking up early and trudging out to the lake to see Rocky coming out of the brush with that duck, and I can’t wait to see it happen again!
Unfortunately, I was not able to get a picture of Rocky with his prey. After a brief conversation, the hunter took the duck and headed back to his blind, and Rocky and I headed back to our spot. However, once the second half of the Texas season opens up, we’ll be back at it again, and I’m confident that I’ll have some more photo opportunities with Rocky and ducks…and this time I’ll have a nice camera!
No comments:
Post a Comment