I can't get too inflamed about the shooting skills of the vice president in my long career of just about everything from duck hunting to skeet shooting. I once brought home some unused clay pigeons after telling Elsbeth I was going skeet shooting and she was furious because she had spent the afternoon looking for a recipe on how to cook them.

I have never hit a quail or a chukar.

I did accidentally hit a robin with my slingshot when I was 8 years old but he got up and got on his branch again. The first time I went duck hunting my old buddy Cliff Goodman of White Center took me to the Skagit Flats on opening day.

We put his skiff in the delta, rowed down to a big snag where he dropped me off and then went to find his own perch. The sky was blue and thousands of ducks were enjoying themselves wheeling overhead. It was 10 a.m. and we had to wait until noon. I had an old 12-gauge shotgun and three boxes of shells and the ducks were so thick above a guy could just hold the gun up and blow a hole in the sky and come home with his limit. Even a blind man could eat duck for dinner.

Oh yeah!

At ten minutes to the opening, guns started blasting and I was not about to miss the orgy, so I started banging away also. I never even got the gun stock up to my shoulder as I shot up three boxes, 75 shells, and finally hit one duck.

I had no dog, so I got off my driftwood snag, grabbed my mesh onion bag with my peanut butter sandwich and orange and headed over in my hip boots to get my prize.

What I did not know was the whole flat is a series of hundreds of small channels in the mud about three feet deep that are hidden as the tide rises and I stepped into one almost instantly and went in the icy water up to my hips. Even my lunch bag went under. But I was not to be vanquished that easily and continued on to my duck, picked the poor little thing up and somehow got back to my snag. My peanut butter sandwich was history and my right bicep was swollen purple. In fifteen minutes there was not a duck in the sky and I was freezing miserably as my buddy came by in his boat and picked me up. He laughed at my woebegone condition and held up a tribute to his markmanship and we headed back home.

I went to the garage to take off my soaked duds.

Elsbeth came out, never said a word, but took a look at my triumphant face, got me some dry clothes, and I set about cleaning my kill. I had heard that the feathers come off easily if you dip the fowl in soapy water, so I filled a bucket with hot water and added some soap powder. The system does not work. So I stripped the feathers off one at a time, cleaned the innards out and took him to show my bride. It was only about the size of a pear and had a lot of little blue spots.

Elsbeth was impressed, and took my dinner from me, congratulated me on my hunting skills, walked over to the step-on garbage can and dropped my bird perfectly. She made a great shot herself.

Then she made me a peanut butter sandwich.