First Duck of Spring (Deleted Scene) | Life Below Zero

[Music] What a beautiful evening it is out here by this lake. Plucking my first duck of the spring, it's a great time of the year. Lakes are starting to break up, ducks are starting to come back, and I've been grinning coming up the creek.

I had a great day out here. It took a lot of time to get this duck; I could have shot one sooner, but I wanted to make sure that I could recover them. That was the thing—the water's real cold, and I don't know how deep this lake is, but it looks like it falls off pretty steep right after you leave the shore. So, I didn't want to take a chance having a duck land further out there or blow further out and not be able to recover it.

Yeah, sometimes you hit a duck, and then it lands right on the ice if it's in the air. Or sometimes you'll hit a duck, and it'll be alive for a little while, and it'll start swimming. It'll swim right out off the shore, and you can't get to it. So you got to be careful; you got to pick your shots. If you don't want to lose ducks, you got to make sure that you wait for the right moment.

When that moment comes, you got to seize the opportunity. I was just watching this duck for a long time, and I saw it was getting in close to shore. It wasn't going to go anywhere; there was ice behind it, so it wasn't going to go swimming out. Just waited for the right moment, took a shot, got my duck.

Oh, that duck's going to taste good! It's really just about seeing what's going on, keeping track of the animals, keeping track of the plants, and the change of the seasons. That's what I wanted to do today—get out and take a look at springtime 'cause I hadn't really seen it yet. It just came on so suddenly. Got myself a duck, had a hell of a good [Music] time.