The first time I hunted eastern Idaho’s Market Lake, I got mired in sucking mud that gripped my wader boots as firmly as the jaws of a leg-hold trap. With no dog to handle retrieving duties, I had waded out in a shallow bay to fetch a mallard, stepped in a boggy hole and was immobilized.
While I was laughing at my self-imposed captivity—it was balmy early November so I wasn’t likely to experience hypothermia—my buddy yelled from shore that I should quit thrashing and make like an island. Birds were working our decoys.
A flock of ducks was coming in hard, some already dropping their feet and braking with their wings, others uncommitted and staying high and suspicious. Problem was, I didn’t have my gun—I had left it in our reed blind with the rest of my gear—but that moment was
