I wrote this story a number of years ago. True story. Susie has been gone about 20 years now. I miss her.
Hearing a
Smile
We had been
iced in for days, and the going was tough getting to Stuttgart. A cold front
had moved in bringing with it sheets of ice, slush, and the occasional
snowflake. During night it seemed that Mother Nature wouldn’t lift her hand
from the thermostat, leaving no chance for a thaw. At the farmhouse, we warmed
up and waited with my Grandmother for my father and mother to arrive. Susie
would be with them too. After an hour’s wait, they finally trudged in, Mom and
Dad cold and tired, and Susie frantic with anticipation of the hunt. A glance
at the 10:00 weather, and a call to my Uncle Larry revealed that the same ice
that caused so many truckers to jack-knife on the highway was covering our
normal duck hole and was not planning on leaving. We decided to give it a try
anyway. Ice or not, we were going!
Susie
whined and whimpered when we left her at the farmhouse. We felt it was for the
best. No reason to lose a good dog on account of ice and stupidity, even on the
second to last day of the season.
On reaching
my Uncle’s farm, we found the field roads were solid as pavement. So was the
field. We tromped down to the hole and found it completely frozen. The slush
had formed an inch thick layer of rock hard crust spanning from one side
of the bayou to the other. To make matters worse, the crust was thin enough in
places to allow the clumsy type (read me) to break through. Falling through the
ice-crust, turned out to be our windfall. Though it had made the going an
arduous task at best, our stumbling and falling had splashed muddy water on top
of the ice. Realizing this made our duck hole appear to have the only open
water for many miles, we began to kick and stomp the ice crust, splashing the
muddy water on top of the ice. Half an hour later and about 3 gallons of sweat
into our Gore-Tex linings, and we had ourselves’ quite the honey hole!
Wings
appeared whistling overhead almost immediately, but the shooting was slim. The
birds must have still been at the river. After picking up our seven birds, and
testing our new insulated wader’s claims of warmth for a few hours, we decided
to call it a day.
The
weatherman was truly our friend that evening. Reports of the ice breaking up on
the larger reservoirs perked our attention. With hopes of the ice crust
thinning or disappearing, we made the decision to go back to the honey hole.
This time
we would take Susie. No whimpering and whining this morning. This was Suzie’s
third year hunting and she finally appeared to have ‘gotten’ the game after
many unsuccessful hunts (and ribbing from mine and my father’s buddies). This
was not due to her inability, but should really be attributed to my ham handed
attempts at training her. We fed her half a bottle of baby aspirin hoping to
curb the stiffness in her hips due to displaysia, but the best medicine for her
ailing hips was her enthusiasm. As we rode to the bayou, Susie's tail thumped
rhythmically against her travel kennel wall, almost like she was happy and
smiling. First time I had ever heard a smile.
The field roads
had begun to thaw and promised an ordeal in trying to get back out later that
day. The hole was almost completely thawed on one side, and skim ice covered
the sheltered side of the hole.
While still
setting out the dekes, wings whistled again and again. The jet-fighter roar of
large groups dropping out of the sky signaled the ducks’ intention to fall in
readily. It also told us to get hidden quickly. Shooting time was on us. Susie
and I crouched in the cattails trying to stay hidden. I carved out a hole in
the rushes, and began to make a pile of them for her to perch on. Ears perked,
she kept her nose skyward. Every duck kept her attention now.
Calls
blaring, we easily got the first group to swing in to our spread. Susie made
short work of picking up the drakes we shot, especially once she realized that
bringing them back yielded a hunk of bacon from my coat pocket. The ducks were
hungry too, from days spent on open water. They had been frozen out of the
fields and the woods for days, and their hunger served our cause well. Susie
shivered, but I think it was more from all the excitement than the cold.
Early on, I
managed a long shot on a single trying to sneak into the dekes. It was not a
very clean shot, and the single sailed for what seemed a quarter of a mile.
Suzie was after it immediately, but another group circled just after she hit
the water, so I called her back. We splashed four out of this group, and after
breaking skim ice for 5 minutes, a nice pile of mallard drakes and one gadwall
lay next to Susie on her mound. That original single had sailed off quite far
down the bayou, and I felt we had lost it too far off in too deep cover. Susie
was intent on going for a look. I scolded her and held her back.
We took a
couple of drakes from each of the next few groups, but each time I sent Susie,
she headed the other way, toward that sailing single from earlier. Over and
over again, I stopped her and redirected her efforts to the ducks we had just
dropped. She might have even begun to think her name was “no damnit” as often
as I repeated it. Dad and I amazed at her intensity on going to that duck.
Finally two
ducks short of our limit, I called over to Dad and told him I was going to go
look for that single and take Susie with me. Again it was hard walking. I
stumbled along, while Susie took it in stride. Halfway there, I released her
and she splashed off down the bayou. Eventually, I could only locate her by the
swaying of the cattails above her and the jingling of her tags. I thought for
sure that the single was gone, and there was no way she would find it. Before I
could even get to where I believed it had dropped, Susie appeared from the
cattails with one very big drake in her mouth. She dropped the drake in my
hand, and with head held high, she promptly splashed away to my dad and uncle.
Uncle Larry scratched down one final bird to fill out our limit.
On the way
back to my Grandmother’s farmhouse, we talked about all the groups that worked.
We talked about the great shots we had made. We reveled at our first 3-limit
hunt since the rules had changed. But mostly we talked about the great
retrieves Susie had made, especially the mark and retrieve for that single.
As
we rode along down the now muddy field road, I could hear the proud thumping of
Susie’s tail against the wall of her kennel. She was smiling again.
Thanks for all the great hunts Susie, I miss you in the blind!
