By Chad Love

Remember when I told you the drought earlier this year had dried up virtually all the dog training and duck hunting water in my part of the world and that things were definitely not looking good for waterfowl season? I wasn't kidding.

Yep, you guessed it: it's time for another Man's Best Friend Caption Contest. You know the drill: best caption to the picture above take the prize, which in this case happens to be pretty sweet, and appropriate to the picture. One lucky wit will get two boxes of Remington 12 gauge Nitro Steel duck loads, which the guy in the picture (no, it's not me, really) looks like he could use a few of.

By Chad Love

Yesterday morning my old chessie and I hunkered down among the cattails, eyes lifted to a perfectly brilliant, deep azure sky almost completely devoid of waterfowl. Almost.

Just after first light a pair of gadwall pitched into the decoys and went on the strap. And that was it. No wind, no chill, no clouds, no ducks. Warm sunshine on my skin, flies buzzing around my head. It's as warm a late-season duck hunt as I can remember.

This morning we're in a winter storm warning, temperatures are dropping like a rock and by Wednesday we're supposed to have single-digit windchills, six inches of snow, and, hopefully, a big push of new ducks into the area. Go figure. We'll also have something that I --and many other more southerly duck hunters (and their dogs)--haven't had to deal with thus far this year: ice.

By Chad Love

When it comes to divulging useful information about the ducks and geese they hunt, waterfowlers are easily the shiftiest, most obtuse and completely untrustworthy pack of liars in the outdoors. I know I am, and I'm pretty sure you are, too.

Asking a duck hunter, especially a public water duck hunter, to share info about the ducks he's been seeing is tantamount to asking him to share Polaroids of his wife. It just 'aint gonna happen. Oh, they'll tell you what you want to hear. They'll give you all sorts of detailed information, virtually all of it of the "lies, damn lies and statistics" variety.