By Bruce Ross, Executive Director [email]bross@wisducks.org[/email]

This article originally appeared in Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s October, 2022 Newsletter edition.

As I type this, we are a couple of days into the northern zone regular duck season and only a few short days until the south zone opens.  I’m looking forward to the memories I’ll make – but realize that maybe I’ve already created my strongest memory for the 2022 season.

I carved out some time to hunt during the teal season and made the decision to take my old and “broken down” lab on one of those days.  Twelve-year-old Callie was a helluva great retriever for me – until she blew out her ACL two years ago.  I was prepared to do the $5K TPLO surgery, but on the day before the surgery she was also diagnosed with mast cell cancer and hepatitis (who knew dogs could even contract hepatitis!) and given 12 months to live.   I gave up on the TPLO surgery, tried to make Callie comfortable, and got a new pup, Tack.  Poor Callie had to put up with Tack’s puppy insults (a lot of face-licking), and even worse, bear witness to the training attention that Tack was receiving as her successor, and biggest insult of all, watch as I took Tack hunting instead of her.

Now, more than two years later, Callie is still with us (so much for such longevity prognostications).  So I made a point to get her out for the last day of teal season for what I hoped would be some easy retrieves, and what I feared would be her last.

And the blue wings cooperated, dropping into the open water in front of our set-up, giving Callie a clear look and easy swimming.  I took a lot of pictures.  But this video will be the memory I long carry of my last hunt with Callie.  Her intense scanning of the marsh and her perpetual motion tail, tell the story.

And as I think about my 38-year duck hunting history, such memories crowd my thoughts.  Not the number of times I pulled the trigger or had a full game strap, but the friendships created or strengthened, the miraculous retrieves, the shots my buddies or (much less frequently) I missed, the roar of teal wings that caused me to spill my coffee in a pre-dawn marsh… priceless stuff.

As much as anything, that’s why I’m with WWA.  It gives me the chance to help make sure such memories are possible for others.  And that means taking care of our natural resources; it means bringing aboard the next generation of waterfowlers; and it means making sure policy-makers respect what waterfowlers bring to the table.  I’m proud to be a part of an organization focused on these things.  I hope you are too – let me know what we could be doing better.