The Waterfowl Christening of Lou

The last day in September was finally the opener of this year's duck season. This would be Tallulah's first real live duck hunt, and I was going into this hoping to shoot a few birds, and expecting Lou to be a borderline train wreck. As the sun started to rise, we could see our spread better, and we could see what coot and ducks were filtering into the bay in front of us. Lou was a whining mess when the coot made their way closer, and it was a flock of early ducks that sent her over the edge. She didn't break and tear after them as Mocha had done with me in the past, instead her pent-up frustrations came in the form of her screaming at them. Lou can't bark like a normal dog, nooooo, it's a blood curdling dog scream. I did the best to reign her back a bit, but we needed to put a bird on the water to get her to do something.

When we finally had enough light to see what was going on, I called the shot on the first bird and Dad broke the ice on our opener!

It was slower than I expected, and with as many birds as we were seeing we were not exactly hammering them. Lou was getting more twitchy by the minute.

As we were swapping shells for some geese that were coming off of a near field, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. As the geese moved on, someone came out of the prairie behind us. I leaned over to Dad and said,

"hey there is someone behind us"

We were both rather befuddled but as the man came closer I realized it was Officer Kyle.

He was nice enough to wait to check us after the geese went through in case we had a shot, but once through, he checked our licenses, shotguns, and our birds. He was also quite amused by Lou's fervent display as more birds worked the far corner of our pocket. We talked for awhile, including the fact that we are now only three houses down from Kyle, and offered to hunt with me sometime. It is always a good thing being in positive relationship with CO's. He finally decided he better check some more hunters as there were a few pounding away on the other side of the lake (ironically, they stopped shooting about 20 minutes after he left).

While watching the birds continue to go everywhere else but where we were set up, we made the decision to move to the pinch point a little farther up the shoreline. We have learned in the past, it is almost more important to be where the birds want to be than be where the birds are or have been. Each day changes and we need to change with them. A quick pick up and move and we were back on birds in short order. We made some great shots, some UN-imaginable missing, and did plenty to give Lou something to do. She was SO close to finding a cripple on the far shoreline, but I ended up having to wade across and assist her. All it took was a little guidance and she was on the bird like white on rice. In all honesty, Lou was retrieving like seasoned bird dog. I was beyond impressed with her retrieving abilities, and she was finding birds that we dropped in the prairie section behind us that we would have never found without her. She is becoming a legendary duck dog.

She was doing great; until the goose.

We had a single goose come out of nowhere and work towards our pinch point. The bird was working so perfect it was going to light right into our spread, until Lou decided to break from cover and spook it. As the bird flared, Dad and I took our few shots and pulled the giant honker to the water. With a loud splash, Lou and goose were in the water. With every flop as the goose tried to escape, Lou would scream-bark at it, and I mean SCREAM-BARK. It was as if we were tearing her limb from limb. She was frustrated and terrified and the combo ended in me trudging back out to retrieve the bird with her.

It would have taken far longer, if at all, to have harvested a limit if we had not moved, and with one final bird to finish us off, Dad made a decent shot on a shoveler as I was preoccupied with the pup.

 For a complete rookie, Lou did far better than I could have dreamed. We spent a lot of time working together out at Bailey's and it felt great to see her show me what she was capable of. Each hunt is going to be better than the last and there is a lot of season ahead of us. My goal now is to get her to retrieve a goose by the end of the season...



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