About 50 years ago I lived in an old farm house overlooking thousand of acres of bottom land. There had been a winding creek through the bottom land but the core of engineers came in and cut a new straight channel for miles, this was done so the land would drain and be usable for row crops. They left the old winding creek and its grown up banks for wildlife habitat, because the old creek didn't have hardly any water flow we called it the dead creek.
The ducks loved this old dead creek, I spent a lot of time jump shooting them. Some of the ones I shot fell over land, some fell out in the water, the water was up to 5' deep. I had an Irish setter that was a super retriever but wouldn't put a duck in his mouth so I would hit the creek and get my ducks no matter how cold it was. I often walked home with my clothes frozen solid.
Taking pity on me, one day my wife came home from work, dropped a lab puppy in my lap and said " you are going to kill yourself going after those ducks so here is the solution.
That puppy turned out to be one in million as far as labs go, she was so bright she took little training to do it all, blind retrieves, hand signals, marking multiple downed birds, she flushed rabbits, pointed quail and I am sure she understood English. She never failed on a retrieve even if the duck fell 1/2mile away, she had one speed which was peddle to the metal wide open.
Well the wife ran off with some married guy she met at work but I had the lab, I definitely got the better end of the deal.
Judy the wonder dog, she just spotted a flight of ducks in the distance, she always became every intense at this point. Funny thing; if I missed a couple of easy shots on a flight of ducks she would look up at me in the blind, make a face and whine as if to say, "you have to do better that that bozo".
