1st and last duck hunting experience

A work colleague is into duck shooting and the 2000 season was just about ready to begin. He asked if I wanted to go for the weekend up to the riverland Loxton area for a shoot. Never done it before and it appealed to me to try my hand at it I accepted the invitation.

Saturday morning 3 am we (all 14 guests) were awoken by the landowner to hurry up and have breakfast and get going down to the river. We were al divided up into teams and given locations to get to and make our hides.

One 12 ft dingy 4 adults 2 over 6 ft four shotguns 4 bags of ammo 4 backpacks a 3 efin stupid weimaraners.

Arrived at the rivers edge opened the door and the dogs headed for the water and mud!! Loaded up the dingy for a 1 kilometre backwater boat trip to our designated spot. Good thing we had put our waders on I thought cos the dogs were very wet and muddy and in the 12 ft dingy there wasn’t much room.

Off we go up or was that down ?? the river. There we were, Putt, putt, putting along the river on a very cool morning in almost dark conditions. The dogs were not staying still and one of them wandered up to the front and sat on the bow. That was okay until the skipper decided he couldn’t see very well and called his dog back ……dog remained right where he was…skipper cursed and throttled off oooops bow went under… Hey!!!! We’re taking on water, Get back up under speed!!!! ooops the water that was already in the dingy rushed towards the stern as the skipper poured on the throttle . The stern went under and she started sinking…as she was going down… f*%$ I thought we've all got waders on and this aint going to be nice. How deep is it and an in probably less than 15 seconds the boat had stopped moving ….had it hit the bottom already??? As I was still standing in the boat and water was about 2 inches below my chest height waders I sighed with relief.

Yep, boat had stopped moving & we carefully stepped out of the boat and lifted the her up. We managed to remove enough water from to allow her to partially float. Head for the closest shore was the decision. We soon found out it was deeper water that way but too late it had entered our waders…still not too deep though. We were safe but there could have been a tradgedy if it was any deeper. We unloaded the dingy …. By the time we had finished drying the shotguns our tempers had cooled somewhat and the dog was given a pardon……

One wallet and a brand spanking new digital video camera went missing. We believe that the camera bag had just enough air trapped for it to partially float and then sink into the murky depths
Wow! am I cute
If yer ain't fishing, Yer ain't livin
Richard