Wingbeats and Heartbeats: Essays on Game Birds, Gun Dogs, and Days Afield

Second Chances

146 Sec­ ond ­ Chances No liv­ ing an­ i­ mal on earth has so much down­ right fun as a ­ wildfowler’s dog. H. Al­ bert Hoch­ baum T here are a ­ couple of ­ truisms about old dogs and old duck hunt­ ers. One is that if you are a ­ twelve-year-old Lab­ ra­ dor re­ triever, the cold, dark water of late No­ vem­ ber looks a lit­ tle less in­ vit­ ing than it once did. The other is that if ­ you’re a ­ hunter who has ­ reached the wrong side of sixty, it’s tempt­ ing to hit the ­ snooze but­ ton when the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. That may ex­ plain why Jenny the Lab and I were run­ ning a lit­ tle late on our way to the Mis­ souri River north of Hel­ ena, Mon­ tana, the Sat­ ur­ day after Thanks­ giv­ ing. A few days ear­ lier, it had ­ snowed four ­ inches, and the ­ weather fore­ cast for the week­ end prom­ ised a cold front ap­ proach­ ing from the 147 Second Chances north. The mi­ gra­ tion map on the Ducks Un­ lim­ ited web­ site ­ showed in­ creas­ ing wa­ ter­ fowl ac­ tiv­ ity at ­ points north and west. The hunt had been ­ planned care­ fully, the river ­ scouted, and the lit­ tle duck boat­ loaded in the ­ pickup the day be­ fore. ­ Gray-muzzled Jenny would ride in the truck cab with me, her crate in the back dis­ placed by the duck boat. The drive to the river would take an hour; un­ load­ ing the boat, stow­ ing the gear, cross­ ing to the is­ land, and set­ ting out the de­ coys, an­ other ­ thirty min­ utes. A check of the regs ­ showed legal shoot­ ing time to be 7:13 a.m. A 5:30 de­ par­ ture ­ should have us set up on the is­ land with time to spare. It would be our third run to the river in the past ten days, and so far we ­ didn’t have much to show for our ef­ forts. The first out­ ing had been a Key­ stone Kops af­ fair that could have re­ sulted in a few mal­ lards in the bag . . . if the old dog had kept still when the first bunch flew over, and if the old ­ hunter ­ hadn’t been re­ ar­ rang­ ing the de­ coys when the only other flock of the morn­ ing ­ dropped in. The sec­ ond trip had pro­ duced two green­ heads, one a sin­ gle that came di­ rectly to the de­ coys and an­ other that ­ passed over­ head low­ enough for a shot with the mod­ ified choke of my over/under. A third bird had swung just wide of the ­ blocks at the edge of shot­ gun range, and I let him pass. An air tem­ per­ a­ ture of fif­ teen de­ grees, a wind­ chill fac­ tor ­ around zero, and a ­ strong Mis­ souri River cur­ rent add up to trou­ ble for an old dog chas­ ing a crip­ pled duck. The drive to the river ­ through the moon­ lit land­ scape gave me time to re­ flect on re­ cent ­ events. A year ear­ lier, dur­ ing a ­ late-season pheas­ ant hunt in east­ ern Mon­ tana, my heart had sud­ denly com­ menced an 148 Helpers in the Hunt alarm­ ing ­ out-of-rhythm beat­ ing. By the time my hunt­ ing part­ ner could get me to the near­ est emer­ gency room ­ twenty-five miles away, my arms and legs were numb, and I was gasp­ ing for air. I ­ thought I was hav­ ing a heart at­ tack. For­ tu­ nately, it ­ wasn’t a heart at­ tack but some­ thing ­ called ­ atrial fib­ ril­ la­ tion: a rapid, ir­ reg­ u­ lar beat­ ing of the heart ­ caused by an electri­ cal mal­ func­ tion in the ­ atrial cham­ bers. Spend­ ing a night in the hos­ pi­ tal ­ hooked up to a heart mon­ i­ tor and an IV drip isn’t con­ du­ cive to sleep­ ing, and I spent a lot of time think­ ing about ­ things I used to take for ­ granted, in­ clud­ ing hunt­ ing, and won­ der­ ing what the fu­ ture might hold. Dur...