I was about 16. We came to a pond. We saw a Mallard out in the middle of the pond swimming in about a 10 foot radius circle of water. The rest of the pond was frozen. We had no thought to do anything about the duck until suddenly it took to flight. Without hardly thinking, we both leveled our shotguns and killed the duck. We had no plans of shooting it beforehand and could have been in major trouble if we had been caught, not having a permit to hunt duck. It was just totally reaction to the situation.

He had a dog with him. Was supposedly a hunting dog, but I guess we found out those skills don't cross over to fowl. We sent it out on the ice to get the duck. He went out and sniffed the duck, and returned back to us. We had to go to a forest and find a very long branch (actually a small tree that had fallen) and use it to reach out onto the ice to retrieve the duck.

I took it home. My grandparents lived next door. I asked my grandmother to cook it up for us. She had grown up knowing how to pluck a chicken (putting in scalding water, which makes the feathers more easy to pluck). She had never plucked a duck. She put it in the scalding water and it was like the saying goes, "like water off a ducks back". Hot water has no affect on a duck's feathers for obvious reasons. She had to just physically manhandle that duck and pull it's feathers out with brute force. It tasted very gamey and was very greasy.