Hunting Stories

Okay when I was a kid my father was a big fan of Justin Wilson, he was a Lab loving, duck hunting, Louisiana based Cajun cook, well sort of.

Anyhow he was really more a southern comic that cooked and was big with the Orvis wearing, LL Bean shopping, gun toting, retriever training, Ducks Unlimited member type folks.

Well we had this album with a bunch of his “routines” on it and I like two stories in particular. One was about a retriever who couldn’t swim and a retriever that could count.

Since I have been slacking on the blogging – don’t blame me, blame Christopher Columbus because the extra time off messed up my whole schedule – so I am including my versions of Mr. Wilson’s Lab stories and a third someone sent me via email recently. Since we are all mourning the passing of summer to fall I though a little humor might help.

The first story starts out with a man from New York looking to buy a good Lab for some duck hunting. He finally ends up down in Louisiana and this local guy offers to show him a few of his dogs.

The local has two dogs with him and as they sit in a duck blind and begin shooting some game he sends the first dog out. And the New York fellow is impressed by the dogs marking ability and so on and asks how much for the dog. The local fellow says $2,000 and he is yours.

The New York man says “Well, what about that dog over there, how much for him? Can you send him out so I can see him work?”

The Louisiana man says “No sir, you don’t want that there dog, he no good. I can show you his retrieving but he no good, he is only $200.”

The New Yorker persisted and finally a duck was shot and the second dog runs out of the blind. The dog is quick and goes trit trot walking right on top of the water, not getting wet one bit and comes straight back with the bird. Another duck is shot and again, to the New Yorker’s amazement the dog walks on water right out to the duck and come back the same way.

The New Yorker say, “WOW that dog walked on water, why did you say he was no good?? This is a miracle, a phenomenon!”

The local guy says. “No, no, that dog is no good, I never could teach the darn thing to swim.”

The second story starts out with Mr. Jones who is also looking for a retriever to go duck hunting with. He talks to a lot of his friends and ends up at a breeder who lives down in Cajun country in Louisiana.

The breeder brags to the man that he has a Lab who can sneak out, find ducks and come back and tell you how many fowl he saw. The hunter thinks this is just too good to be true, but the breeder says, “Let me show you, lets take the dog out for a little test.”

So the breeder, the hunter and the Lab all go out in the marsh country. The breeder tells the hunter to hang back while they send the dog over to the water. The dog bounds over a hill and through tall grass and is gone for several minutes. When the dog comes back he barks four times, and the breeder indicates that there are four ducks on the water.

Sure enough the two men walk over and sure enough there are four large mallards sitting in the marsh waters. The men repeat this a few times and each time the dog accurately predicts the number of ducks the men will find and barks to indicate that number.

The hunter says he wants to bring a friend who will co-own the dog out to show him this miracle dog. The breeder agrees and says to the hunter he and his friend can take the dog hunting the following day.

The two hunters go out and just a couple hours later come back to the breeder. Both men are battered and bruised, one man has a cut and is bleeding and the other has cuts all over his arms and legs. The hunter says to the breeder, “Come over here and get your dog, we aren’t buying him, he just went crazy.”

The breeder is alarmed and runs over to the truck to see the dog all disheveled, tied up and in a crate. He turns to the hunter and exclaims, “What the heck happened?”

The hunters say that the first time the dog went out he came back and barked nine times and when the hunters went over, there were nine ducks just sitting and waiting. The second time the dog came back and barked twenty times and sure enough there was twenty ducks.

“The third time we sent the dog out he came back with a big stick” the hunter started, “and he just ran around hitting us with the stick acting all crazy and wild and we just didn’t know what to do. It took the two of us just to get him in the crate and we hurried right back over here. The dog has gone loco or something. All we know is we can’t hunt with a crazy dog that hit’s us with a stick so you’ll have to take him back.”

The breeder leans back and starts to shake his head. He lifts off his cap and lets out a big sigh. “Man,” he says, “ you don’t know anything. All that dog was trying to do is to tell you two knuckleheads that there were more ducks than you could shake a stick at out on that marsh”

And the third goes like this…

A guy is driving around Maryland and he sees a sign in front of a house: "Talking Dog For Sale."

He rings the bell and the owner tells him the dog is in the backyard. The guy goes into the backyard and sees a Labrador retriever sitting there.

"You talk?" he asks.

"Yep," the Lab replies.

"Really, now!!! So, what's your story?"

The Lab looks up and says, "Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA about my gift, and in no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping.

I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years running. But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals. Then, I met a gorgeous female Lab, had a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."

The guy is amazed. He runs back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.

"Ten dollars," the guy says.

"Ten dollars??? This dog is amazing. Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?"

"Because he's lying. He never did any of that spying' stuff."