Thunder has been hunting since he was a puppy.  At 9 years old he has a lot of hunting experience.  That experience paid off on the river last week.

A nice drake wood duck came in and hubby shot it.  It went down, but then it flew off toward the other side of the river.  Hubby had no idea where it went after that.

That is where the old hunting dog comes in.  Thunder knew where it was.  He swam across the river and continued way down the bank on the far side of the river.  Hubby figured he would let Thunder go because he did not want to loose that crippled duck.

Thunder kept going through some very thick cover.  If the bird was there but it must have been diving and moving down river.

All of a sudden Thunder started thrashing around a bit and sure enough, here he comes with the duck, from way down on the other side of the river.

Thunder has always been able to come up with birds even in the densest cover.  He can find a tiny teal among thick marsh grass.  Normally he does not leave birds in the field. He will work until he finds them.

The main reason to hunt with a dog is to recover crippled birds.  If you shoot it, you really want to recover it and the chances of doing that are so much better with a good dog.  One of my big complaints of modern hunt tests is that they do not test the dog’s natural ability in a hunting situation where the hunter has no idea where the bird went.  Finding cripples in a tough hunting situation is something that cannot be trained.  It is natural talent and experience earned by many retrieves.

When hubby looked at the wood duck, he had hit it alright and it should have gone right down.  There is something about those wood ducks.  They must have armor under their feathers because you can hit them and sometimes they still fly or swim away.  But they are no match for the Mighty Thunder!

A few birds came by after they recovered the drake, but the ducks would not come close enough.  We are not sure if the wood ducks are still around or not.  If they are, hubby has a plan for a different set-up next time they go out.

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