Most of my funny hunting memories concern dogs. One that comes to mind:
I was hunting pheasants along a creek with fairly wide strips of cover on both banks. Donner, my shorthair, was investigating something off to my left when a rooster flushed over on my right.
I dropped the bird on the far side of the creek. Donner didn't mark the fall. Although an excellent natural retriever, he wasn't force fetched and there was no way I could send him across the creek--which was too deep for me to wade and too wide to jump--since he hadn't seen it. But the bird fell near a big old oak. There were only a few trees along the stream, and I figured it wouldn't be any problem finding the bird when we hunted the other side.
Half an hour later, having circled around and started up the other side, we approach the tree. Donner gets birdy, locks on point right down by the water. I give Donner the "fetch" command, but it turns out the bird isn't quite dead. In fact, still able to fly . . . more or less. It takes off skimming the water. Fearing it will escape, I shoot it and it splashes down just next to the far bank.
Donner jumps in, swims across, scoops up the bird, and scrambles up the far bank. "Good boy, fetch!" I tell him. He stands there looking at me. If I could have read his canine brain, I think it was telling him "I can fetch, and I can swim . . . but I can't do both at once!" So we're at an impasse.
I did the only thing that seemed sensible to me: Started walking back toward the gravel road and the bridge on my side of the creek, Donner keeping pace with me on his side. He completed the retrieve in the middle of the bridge.
