I shudder at the risks I and my freinds took when we were teenagers. I came home more than once with my pants frozen on, cracked at the knees looking like stovepipes after falling through ice duck hunting.
Some of the best open holes in the swamps I hunted were so far away from where we had access that we laced up our ice skates with our boots tied together over our shoulders and our guns slinged over the other and skated a half mile or so to the spot. There was always one place that we had to jump a chasm of open water at least 4 feet wide. The social pressure was extreme to say the least to not be called a wimp if you balked. The water was only waste deep but the mud was deep too.
In the early fall there were places where you had to walk on the matted roots of the lilly pads that floated in a thick mesh. We all fell through at one time or another but hey, if you knocked a duck down you had to go get it. We did not have any dogs and very rarely had access to a boat, though we did use a rectangular steel concrete mixing tub one season LOL.
The good old days!
