Years ago I had a black Labrador Retriever named Magnum. He was a great
dog, though long gone now.

I taught him how to retrieve
ducks and dove and even quail. He had a very soft touch, and never argued over
ownership of the dead bird, but happily turned it over when I asked for it. He
heeled well and "stayed" on command, most of the time. Gun shots did
not scare him, but made him anxious to break. Despite his eagerness, he would
wait dutifully until I said "fetch."

Once Wally (aka Gunny from
his days as a Marine Corps Gunnery Sargent) and I took him to duck hunt in the
dead of winter. Four or five inches of
snow covered the ground and the roads were icy. The wind blew steadily out of the cold
north, a fact I came to appreciate when I jumped out of the car into the
darkness of the morning to unbolt the steely cold ranch gate. Wally drove his little French sports car as
close to the duck blind as he could and parked under the trees. We crunched through the frozen snow about a
hundred yards to the blind and jerked open its frozen door.

The blind was made of old
pink painted doors nailed together salvaged from some torn down building and
resurrected to serve in this new capacity.
The top and sides were covered
with at least three layers of evergreen trees cut down to serve as
camouflage. The front side facing the
water was also covered with evergreen up to about three feet off the ground,
and from there to the roof was open for shooting. The dog exit was next to the main door on the
left, it opened on a top hinge and allowed the dog to bound out and jump
directly into the water.

We, settled in the duck blind
with coffee just before sunup sitting comfortably on the ledge that was dug out
of the bank of the tank and covered with hay and blankets. We even turned on the gas heater and broke
out the breakfast tacos we picked up on the way in. The temperature inside had to be 80 degrees
even though outside it was well below freezing and windy. Now, that's not necessarily duck hunting
Texas style, but I first learned the art from my then-father-in-law, who drove
to the blind in his SL-500 and made sure all his creature comforts were close
at hand (he was not present on this trip, so we were sort of roughing
it--though no one actually had to wade in the water other than the dog--and
that's the story).

The tank (lake) was about 100
yards wide and a quarter of a mile long. It was partially frozen over on the
banks, but there was open water in the middle. It was one of the larger tanks
in the area and we had it decoyed to bring in the greenheads.

As you might expect, even
though plenty of ducks were flying that day, few came within shooting range,
and just as we were preparing to call it a morning, a huge snow goose roared
over the blind. Instinctively, I jumped up and shot it. It was an easy kill,
even for a 20 gauge. It crumpled and splashed into the middle of the tank.

Magnum salivated with the
shot and burst through the opening in the blind when I sent him to fetch the
goose. He broke through the ice crunching it with his paws in front of him and
paddled out eagerly to the middle of the tank. Just as he grabbed the goose
between his teeth, it flared up and swatted him with its wings several times.
He did not like that at all, and realized the size and scent of the bird was
not like anything he had ever seen before. As a result, he started to swim back
without the goose. I hollered at him from the blind, and he dutifully returned
to the goose, only to be slapped again. He did this about 4 times, each time
with the same result. Each time I sent him back, and each time he returned for
more goose-rendered punishment. The wind was blowing away from the blind, so
the bird was moving farther and farther down the tank until, finally it edged
into the reeds down wind and across to the other side. Magnum must have been
cold, but did not know how to return empty handed, so he would swim back toward
the blind, and turn around when he saw me waiving my arms wildly and pointing.
I was speaking every French word I knew and ultimately I was running on the
side of the tank trying to keep Magnum attended to the bird. Despite his
willingness to continue swimming back and forth looking for something to
retrieve, he steadfastly refused to put that goose in his mouth. After a good
thirty minutes of swimming, well after the goose stopped thrashing, Magnum
realized the bird was in fact dead and no longer a threat. He swam to the bird,
took the longest feather from the edge of the wing in between his teeth. He
began paddling back to the blind pulling the goose over his shoulder, swimming
sort of sideways, careful not to touch the goose. He completed the retrieve by
dragging the goose from the water by that one feather and then sitting in front
of me as if to say, "Done."

Wouldn't you know it, as I
was praising him and drying him off, a flock of greenheads angled in, ready to
land directly in front of the blind right in the midst of the decoys. It would
have been a perfect shot and Wally and I would have filled our limit for the
day with that one flight (as I recall, at the time, just a few mallards filled
the limit). My shotgun was, of course, in the blind, Wally was doubled over
from g Magnum's antics and the ducks we came to shoot veered off sharply at the
sight of me standing there with the wet dog and snow goose.