Duck Hunting Dog Quotes

...fiction writing is like duck hunting. You go to the right place at the right time with the right dog. You get into the water before dawn, wearing a little protective gear, then you stand behind some reeds and wait for the story to present itself...You choose the place and the day. You pick the gun and the dog. You have the desire to blow the duck apart for reasons that are entirely your own. But you have to be willing to accept not what you wanted to have happen, but what happens... By the time you get out of the marsh, you will have written a novel so devoid of ducks it will shock you.

Kristen? Do you think it’s weird Tucker showed up on the anniversary of the accident? I mean, it is, right?” She waited for me to continue, stirring her ice around her glass. “Tucker literally fell into my lap. And do you know what kind of dog he is? A Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever.” I ticked the long name off with a five-finger tap on the countertop. “A hunting dog, Kristen. Ducks.” Kristen knew better than anyone the significance of that. Duck hunting had been Brandon’s favorite sport. He’d fly out to South Dakota every year for it with Josh.

Vladimir, released from prison in St. Petersburg, was given five days in St. Petersburg and four in Moscow to prepare for his exile. He traveled alone across the Urals, taking with him a thousand roubles and a trunk filled with a hundred books. His three years in the quiet backwater Siberian village of Shushenskoe near the Mongolian border were among the happiest of his life. The river Shush flowed nearby and was filled with fish, the woods teemed with bears, squirrels and sables. Vladimir rented rooms, went swimming twice a day, acquired a dog and a gun and went hunting for duck and snipe.

Once the command is learned, stop giving him the praise. The dog must learn to do the command for the sake of the work. Watch a good worker bring in the duck, you will see that the doing is the reward. Save the praise for in front of the fireplace, when the work is over.

Few things taste better or deliver a more unalloyed experience than wild game we have killed, cleaned, and cooked ourselves (especially grouse, woodcock, teal, wood ducks - birds that simply cannot be domesticated, pen reared, or artificially farmed in any way, shape, or form.) Yet we also realize that, depending on one's degree of personal sensitivity, capacity for ironic reflection, or susceptibility to guilt, there is always that signal moment, when the dog delivers a dead bird to hand, that can occasion a haunting, unresolvable mix of "self-satisfaction and self-reproach," as Texas-born novelist William Humphrey says in Open Season: Sporting Adventures (1986), because "you hold in your hand the creature you both love and love to kill.

The idea of duck hunting is to get up about the time that people who are having fun go to bed and get dressed in dirty flannels, itchy thermal underwear, muddy hip boots, clammy rain ponchos, and various other layers of insulation and waterproofing, then clamber, trudge, wade, paddle, stumble, flounder, and drag yourself miles into a swamp while carrying coolers, shell boxes, lunch buckets, flashlights, hand warmers, Buck knives, camp stoves, toilet paper, a couple of dogs, and forty or fifty imitation ducks, then sit in a wet hole concealed by brush cuttings and pine boughs until it’s dark again and you can go home. Meanwhile the weather will either be incredibly good, in which case the ducks will be flying in the clear sky thousands of feet above you, or incredibly bad, in which case the ducks will be landing right in front of you but you won’t be able to see them. Not that any actual ducks are required for this activity, and often none are sighted. Sometimes it’s worse when they are. The terrible thing about duck hunting is that everyone you’re with can see you shoot and see what you’re shooting at, and it is almost impossible to come up with a likely excuse for blasting a decoy in half.

On those occasions when I missed - I think more often than not - he would watch the duck fly away, turn to me and give me a look of such uncompromising pity and scorn that I would feel compelled to apologize and make excuses. "The wind moved the barrel," or "A drop of water hit my eye when I shot." Of course he did not believe me but would turn back, sitting there waiting for the next shot so I could absolve myself.

She looked at me, dead serious, and put a hand on Stuntman Mike’s head. “He’s a hunting dog.” “I’m pretty sure that’s an insult to hunting dogs everywhere.” I dug for my cell and pulled up a picture of my buddy’s Lab with a duck in his mouth. “This is a hunting dog.