I had a similar experience many years ago, when hunting the prairie of northeastern Montana late in the season for both pheasants and ducks. A much older mentor took me on a tour of a dozen stock ponds, just when they were starting to freeze up. The ponds held ducks, and the cover around 'em held pheasants--and the temperature might have been 15 degrees.
I was doing most of the hunting and shooting, while my old buddy kept the pickup warm. On the third pond (if I remember correctly) I shot a couple of mallards after sneaking up to the dam from below. They fell in the pond, but the water around the edges, full of cattails, had maybe 3/4" of ice. The only dog we had was the relatively small and ill-trained Lab-cross belonging to my friend, and he wouldn't go after the ducks.
So I started breaking through the ice in my hip boots, at a point where the wind would push the ducks into the cattails. At that point the dog decided he wanted to go out after all, and swam behind him as I broke the ice. About halfway to the open water, however, he tried to climb up my back, dumping me.
I slogged back to the pickup, emptying my hip-boots and getting into the passenger seat in my wet pants and wool socks. After an hour and a half in front of the full-blast heater, while driving to a couple more ponds which my mentor jump-shot, I'd dried out enough to put the hip-boots back on and start hunting again....
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.” John Steinbeck
