The muddy dog

So I love telling stories about my hunting dogs. So when thinking about what I wanted to write today a great story came into mind.

I was duck hunting with a good friend in Longview WA. I had never hunted down there and my friend was newish to duck hunting. He said he knew of a few spots we could put a sneak on some ducks.

We pulled up to the first spot which was a small creek drainage into a larger river. We hiked down the bank to get behind the cat tails and snuck up on the ducks. I shot 3 and my friend shot 2. My dog Remi brought back 4 birds. Thinking we had one more still down, we walked walked up and down the east bank looking for the duck. We could not find the duck, so we went to our next spot.

Picture of Remi on slate peak in Washington State.

The rest of the day was uneventful and long. On the way back home we decided to stop by the first spot and just see if we could find the missing duck. When we got to the spot and the water was much lower like the tide had gone out. Remi got out onto the mud and started sniffing around. On the west bank she was showing a lot of interest up on the bank. There was about a 2 foot drop off from the top of the bank to the mud and grass was hanging over the bank. Remi jumped off the bank and started looking through the grass hanging over the bank. Remi then disappeared into the bank, she was gone from sight. We heard a light growling and heavy sniffing and grunting coming from the hole she vanished into. (I don't know if it was a beaver den entrance or what but it was deep enough for my 50 pound dog to explore. Anyway a few seconds later this muddy nasty dog came out of the bank with a drake mallard.

The day had very little success but the success we did get way pretty cool.