Daisy is my three year old black lab that is new to duck hunting. All summer long we would go out in the heat to train for duck season. She’s a fairly intelligent dog that would do anything to please me, but some commands just do not click right away in a dog’s brain. Persistently day by day we would go out behind the house out in the big back yard I have and see how far we have came from the day prior. I had four weeks to transform an inside dog that has never even heard a gunshot into a lean mean duck retriever. This was not going to be an easy task. October rolls around again. One week until the 2014 season opener for waterfowlers in Michigan… and Daisy is far from ready.
“Do you think we should take her?” Dad asks.
“She’s gotta get
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Ten minutes until the first mallard duck that decides to drop into the decoys gets a beak full of steel. The sun made it just light enough out that we could look up and see the silhouettes of ducks circling overhead. We all knew that we were in for a good hunt. As soon as the clock showed it was the time to fire, I was shaking with adrenalin. However I’m still not sure who was more excited, me or the dog. But, not all good hunts start out on a good note… the first flight of the morning was not very productive and we might have killed one or two by 8 o'clock. I was starting to wonder if Daisy would even get to make a retrieve or not. We would get the occasional one or two mallards fly around but they would not act interested with what our decoy spread had to offer. All of a sudden one lonely hen mallard comes floating right above our decoy spread. I stand up and fire once and the duck crumples out of the air and plunges into the decoys. Daisy watches it fall and as soon as it hits the water I sent her out to retrieve her first ever duck that I shot. She leaps into the muddy swamp water and starts on a path towards the fallen bird. I was hoping she would not get caught in the decoy lines because that would throw her off course and possibly make a dangerous situation. It was about a 30 yard retrieve right in the middle of the decoys, and Daisy did it perfectly. Straight to the duck and straight back, just like how we trained on all