Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/554642
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 3 4 She grinned. Her hat was run down low over her eyes but sleet stuck to her eyelashes anyway. "You call me whatever you want," she said. "Just call me." She was deadly with a crossing right-to-left shot, and she neatly folded the last bird. Likely shooting at the first, but I kept mum. One hell of a shot, no matter what. The birds screamed down the wind to the southeast corner of Little Windy, wheeled and banked before the birch and aspen treeline, came back to the blocks with their feet hanging, White Powder Wonder two-piece shotshell box perfect. "Get down, get down," she said. Get down hell! "I'm all for vimen's rights" my Swede neighbor once confided, "till dey start telling me vere to poot it. Den dat's going too far." I briefly concurred but there was scant time for philosophy. Those birds would have decoyed to a marching brass band playing "Dixie." But they never played "Dixie" way up there, a damn shame. And I will get to that by and by. No time to stuff another shell, she missed one bird, tagged another, and clicked on a third. I was shooting a Model 12 modified choke, circa 1956, ounce and an eighth copper-washed number fives, absolutely deadly on pheasants or decoying ducks, way before the lead shot ban. Flock after flock, raining ducks. Dead birds in the canes, aground on ice-rind, blown clean to the far end of Little Windy, a ten-bird limit in those days and no reason to stretch the law. "Let's pick up and go find us a fire," I said. I'd stuffed the stove with green oak before dawn and it should still be making heat. She worked the oars and I snagged the blocks. Decoy strings froze fast to my gloves. We switched places when I could no longer use my fingers, and we found all the birds but one. That felt good but the fire felt better, and the whiskey