January 2005 Hunting Stories

Wednesday January 5, 2005 at 9:30 A.M.  Today will be a short hunt as both Reggie and I got a late start 'cause we had to see out granddaughters off to school on the bus. So by the time I got to Reggie's place it was nearly mid morning. Then Reggie has to get bach home in time to be there when the school bus returns with his granddaughter. The roll of grandparents certainly has changed over the years hasn't it?
So off we go with just Pete and Timmy. Because of the brevity of this hunt we'll cast the hounds into a small well known cover and get a couple rabbits or runs and pack it in. The skies are overcast and the temperature at 25 degrees and about a 50-50 mix of bare ground frozen hard and ice. Pete opens a few minutes into the woods and Timmy who was close by hit the line in a drive and we were off. Scenting conditions have been poor lately but the hounds nontheless have been able to keep a hare moving. We lost our first hare of the season the other day and as winter creeps in slowly this year I expect that maybe a few more hare will slip away? The dogs do a pretty good job running together and drive at times then check and grind it out at other times. I manage to see the hare 3 times without getting off a shot and Reggie shoots the thing the fourth time he saw the "moving ghost" eighty minutes into the run. After the kill, I worked the dogs to the further end of this cover into some small pine trees and the dogs routed a hare out of a squat right by me. I called Reggie that the hare would cross in a little hollow where we've shot many hare in the past and that's what happened. Reggie was standing there and the hare ran by him stopping on a little patch of bare ground. We had decided to let this one go a while as due to time constraints this would be our last run. Reggie calls to say the rabbit is sitting in front of him and wished that the kids were there to whack him. There is a tall stand of open pine trees not far away and a bit later the hare ran several hundred yards right through those open trees and began to make a big circle. I moved up to where Reggie was, then we moved further up to a high spot where we could see a long ways in this tall timber. The dogs ran pretty well with a few checks here and there, as the temperature got colder with Canadian air now pushing through the area. Thirty five mintues into the run the bunny hops out of the thicket thirty yards away from us and squats in the open pines with his ears laid flat back against his body. Mr. Hare must've thought he was invisible but boy was he wrong. The hounds checked a couple of times as they made their way toward us, then checked again and then died, 50 yards from this squatted hare. I moved in on the "invisible hare" still in a squat in front of us and jumped him out, then proceeded to call the dogs in to run it again. They ran this fresh track about 30 yards to a dead loss. WOW, man that drove me nuts! Who can figure it. Too hot, Too cold, Too wet, Too dry, etc. etc. etc.; BUT NEVER "TOO MUCH DOG"! And so it goes.

Friday January 7, 2005 at 8:30 A.M.  We got 4 inches of fresh snow last night and the day has cleared off with temperatures about 20 degrees. Not a lot of wind and conditions appear great. I will hunt a little spot alone with the one dog I brought "SOPHIE". I have to bushwhack into this thicket I know about and take a GPS reading to facilitate the shortest way out later in the day. As I walk Sophie on the lead I notice a pair of coyote tracks and plenty of deer tracks in the fresh snow. Not a rabbit track anywhere as I dip deeper and deeper into the bush. The storm ended late last night so any tracks found won't be too old and Sophie is a rabbit starting machine. I finally get to the thicket in about 30 minutes and cut her loose. Snow is on the trees and every time a gust of wind comes up I get a mini snow storm drop on me. It didn't take long for the dog to get a bunny going and she circles it in a very thick alder swamp. One loop and there she goes straight out, and I wait. Fifteen minutes of waiting and I can barely hear her circling a quarter of a mile away. So I leave point "A" and head for point "B" where she is. By the time I get to where she's running, the place is all tracked up from the circles she's made previous to my arrival. Kinda hard to see and no sense moving much now that the hare is patterning in this spot. Twenty fives minutes into this run I see the hare coming and blast him. Sophie runs up to the dead bunny and moves on to find another. Ten minutes later she's off on another rabbit and I stand in the same spot I was on before when I shot the first one. She makes a circle with the critter but he gets by me in some thick pine trees. I saw the hound go by but not the hare. More often than not seeing is always a major issue. A few minutes later she goes straight out of this spot to, can you can guess where? Right to point "A" where the first bunny was started. Bunny ONE goes from point "A" to point "B" then Bunny TWO goes from point "B" to point "A". YUUUK! So I move on down only to get zero favorable results down there as she eventually lost the rabbit in some water bushes and tall grass. Not good; I hate lost rabbit. I call her out and move back up to point "B" and let her go. Once again she does her magic and gets another bunny going. This time she's locked on gets a good hour and forty five minute run to a kill. Though it's still early I decided to save the rest of these bunnies until I can get the grand kids in here some other day. Nice day; a fun hunt and the dog did pretty good, what else can you ask for.

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Friday January 17, 2005 at 7:30 A.M.  Chris has off from school today in honor of the Civil Rights movement. It had snowed about an inch in the area last night so any tracks found were sure to be fresh and they would afford us the ability to find bunnies readily. We hit the trail early and headed to one of the local covers we occasionally hunt around here. It was 22 degrees on the truck thermometer and Sophie and Timmy were in the traveling boxes. Scenting is hard to figure sometimes as yesterday at the Beagle Club, on frozen crust and ice, I got great running with Rosy and Ruth for over 3 hours. I was hopeful that the dogs would run equally as well today too. Christopher and I leashed and collared the hounds and walked them into the midlle of the cover a twenty minute walk away. We let the dogs go and Sophie once again did a bit of cold trailing, only to follow up those occasional barks with some fast chopping music as the hare was put into a run. Tim gets into it with her and ten minutes later the hare came flying by me barely within sight some 50 yards away and I cut loose a round. Chris had moved along the tote road further than I thought and had he taken up a stand where I thought he should've, he'd a gotten a whack at the rabbit too. Sooo, way on down the other end of the swamp the hare went and out of hearing the dogs went too. With the snow on the trees from the last snow fall and the little bit we got last night, hearing as well as visibility was poor. We've hunted this place many times before and kinda knew how to hunt it. They would return! Moving around a lot wasn't something I wanted to do very much today with the snow on the trees so I waited, and waited, and waited some more and I could barely hear them way off as they circled a tight stand of pines afar off. Then, they came closer and closer as the hunt was coming back to the area he was started started over an hour before. "POW"click click "POW" the .410 of Christopher's fired! A couple minutes later I saw the hare bee-lining it through some alders nearly 40 yards away and I let go both barrels, "BOOM" "BOOM", two quickies and the dogs kept coming. About where I shot they checked, a phenomena that I have never figured out. Quite often they check right where you've shot??? Anyway, Timmy reached out a bit and hit the track and a hundred yards further he checks again. Then he starts barking with an unusal tone, and he's going nowhere. So I start to move up toward him as he's pounding in one spot and some of the tenor of his voice is muffled! I get up to where he is and he's halfway into a hole under a big rock trying his darndest to get at what I suspect is the bunny. I pulled him out of there by a hing leg and leashed him up. Either Christopher or me hit that critter I guess and the hare decided to go to ground. This is not a very common thing for a hare to do but I've seen it done a number of times over the years especially if they've been hit.

I call Sophie over and we move away from the rock and let them go. After a while both dogs open in unison and the beginning of a two hour run began. The dogs would drive a half a circle or so then hit a loss. Figure it out then repeat the scenario over again. Christopher saw the hare cross the tote road out of range a few times and I managed to see the hounds go by after the hare had slipped by me. Frustrated by this rabbits elusiveness I decided to stay on a spot he'd crossed a number of times. He was running WAAY ahead of the hounds, so I had to stay focussed if I wanted to see him before he slipped by again. The strategy payed off as finally I saw the bunny coming and I killed him with one shot at about thirty yards. I moved up to the kill site and shot the dogs with a camera, as they came up to the DEAD hare. Then I got 'em both hooked up on a lead and walked out of the snow laden fir trees to the stand that Christopher had been watching. We had enough time now for one more run so I took the two dogs to the edge of a little swale swamp where the hounds hadn't done any running in previously, and cast them. Sophie hit one hot out of a squat and pushed him hard some two hundred yards before Timmy got to her. He made a loop and came back my way but passed just out of sight. Then he got by Christopher who was watching a tote road and a while later came my way again passing by just too far and too fast to get off a shot. He turned a hard right and went straight away from me and headed for a beaver bog close by, and crossed it! Not good; for to follow across that bog was too dangerous because the thickness of the ice on those things vary so much. All we could do is wait and hope for the best. The hare was good to us, as he ran clear around the entire beaver flowage back to the area he had been started in. Chris saw him cross the road and fired a shot at the fleeing hare, resulting in a clean miss. I got on the phone and called Christopher and told him to pick up the dogs as I didn't want to risk the chance of that hare going back across the waterway again. That ended the hunt and we walked out. It was a fun hunt with plenty of running with both of us seeing the hare a number times and getting some shooting in. At the truck the temperature was 17 degrees; colder than when we left this morning. That's the way it goes!

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Thursday January 20, 2005 at 9:00 A.M.    We got 4 inches of fresh snow last night and I just finished shoveling the porches, walk ways and plowing the driveways. Reggie and I have a hunt planned but we'll get a late start this morning due to the storm. It was 5 degrees out early in this morning, and it has warmed up a bit to ten degrees as I traveled to Reggie's house. In the photo you'll see a winter wonderland of white snow, clear blue skies and the sharp green color of the pine needles! BUT it's a "HAREHUNTERS" nightmare as this scenario muffles the sounds of the hounds and makes seeing the white bunny "wicked hard"! We decide to hunt a place that we know real well, that we've hunted a few times this year and can always find a bunny or two. Because the storm cleared out real early this morning, there probablywon't be many if any fresh tracks to facilitate getting a quick start. Reggie has Pete and I have his younger brother Timmy. But after letting the hounds go at the truck they hit a line surprisingly quick and off they went. It didn't take long for them to be out of hearing because of the snow on the trees. Scenting is a hard thing to figure out! Its pretty cold out now, as it has been lately and the dew point in the negative numbers which means extremely dry air. Our running has been these last few weeks poor, but this morning the checks were few and and of short duration. My guess was that we'd have mediocre running but that was not the case as the running was great. Just can't figure how scenting will be on any given day? We decided to just let them run a while and we did. Reggie saw the hare several times and I had him come within spitting distance of me a few times too. It didn't take long to get that place all tracked up with the many circles the dogs made, but it made no difference as the running remained sustained. Good snow dogs will use their eyes a lot, but after its all tracked up the visual aid is negated. After forty five minutes of running we opened season on this hare and a short while later I got a whack at him and rolled him over. The hounds came running up to it and they got a few hare hairs in their teeth before we moved on.
I worked the dogs a short ways to a spot where both hounds hit an old line and worked it together about 5 minutes into a drive. This run was a repeat of the previous one. Few checks, and steady going. I decided not to bag this one and let Reggie do the honors, so I got the camera out and stood behing the "TROOPER" with the digital. If I had a movie camera this scenario would've been a real action shot. As you can see Reggie is about to fire as the hare is approaching and moments after the shutter of the camera snapped, the hare popped into view and got drilled with some number four shot. A half a minute after the kill Tim and Pete came upon the dead hare and that was that. We decided that we had taken all that we wanted to take out of this place and chose to just let them run the next few hours. The rest of the hare here would be left to multiply so we would have some to hunt next year. I worked the hounds about another ten minutes before they struck another one and off they went once again. Reggie and I headed to the truck to drop off our guns seing that we wouldn't do anymore shooting here. By now the wind had picked up and the snow was blowing off the trees and hearing became difficult some more. Always something in this winter hunting game! At the truck we could barely hear the dogs running, with their sounds muffled by the increasing winds. I says to Reggie, " we ought to pull the "Dewey Maneuver" about now". "What the heck you talking about" he says! Remember that time up north hunting with "Stumpy" and he sneaked away and went to the restaurant for something to eat? "Ya " Reggie replied. Well lets let 'em run and go get a coffee. The store is just a few miles away; so that's what we did. About a half an hour later we return to the "hunt" and could hear the hounds pretty far off. As we prep'd to cut in to them, they sounded like they were coming to us so we waited on the tote road. Closer and closer they came, but changed course just a bit crossing the road we were on, but around a bend some a hundred yards away. We moved down to where they had just crossed and listened. They ran out of hearing again but a while later we heared them coming back. We stood there without our guns listening and watching. Before long the little white fluff of fur came hoping toward us and put on the brakes eight feet away right in the open. He turned to go back but hesitated as he could hear the hounds coming. He jumped into a little patch of cover, and zipped out of there in a hurry. Tim and Pete came rumbling down to where we were standing and we snatched them up on a lead and went home. A real fun day for a couple of "AARP's" .

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Thursday January 22, 2005 at 9:00 A.M.   The weather lately has been fridgid to say the least with morning temperatures in the below zero numbers. To further compound the problem is the fact that dew points have been in negative numbers which makes everything extremely dry. It was 22 below yesterday where we're hunting this morning and it's 8 below zero here as we walk into the woods. We have the two males once again Pete and Timmy and two kids David and Christopher. I guess I have three kids after all as I can't forget the sixty three year old, Reginald Van Gleason the 3rd (aka ;Reggie, Crambo, Super Duper pooper Scooper Trooper). The two dogs get collared up and we get all our gear on including the dreaded SNOWSHOES. Hate them things but they beat hunting in the knee high snows without them. We're hunting an area this morning that we haven't hunted since the encounter we had with a "March Hare" here last March. We still talk about the chase we got on that rabbit last spring, it was a humdinger!
After some ten minutes in the woods with everybody on snowshoes Pete opens a bit into some cold tracking then later Timmy joins in to do a bit of the same off and on picking. It took another ten minutes or so for the houndds to jump a hare and a hunt got started. We got a nice drive of about fifteen minutes before the first check and it was picked in a couple minutes to be followed by another pretty good spurt. With the deep snow the going was not easy as the snowshoes sank deep into the dry powder. The dogs had to plow through the stuff and dog number two, whoever that was at a given point in time just said me too as the track would get completely obliterated. At about the forty minute mark David saw the hare but couldn't get a shot. He called on his radio to Christopher that it was coming his way but he too couldn't get a shot as it passed by some twenty yards away in the hard to see through hemlocks. The hare got a good lead on the dogs and the running got poorer until finally the dogs lost the thing.
Reggie called on his radio to say that there was a porcupine in a tree near him so the two kids hustled down there to dispose of the vermine that occasionally gives us a problem. While those three were dealing with the "pin cushion" the hounds had another rabbit going far enough away that the other three hunters couldn't hear the run. A big hill, coupled with all the snow on the trees, inpaired hearing to some degree. I was lucky to be up near the dogs during this run and managed to get a shot at the "GALLOPING GHOST" but missed at about forty yards away. Reggie had maneuvered himself up to a pretty good place to stand and thirty minutes later shot the hare that was way ahead of the dogs.
We worked the dogs some more and they hit a track pretty hot and ran it steady pushing the rabbit by Christopher who was standing on the Snow Machine trail we walked in on. Christopher managed to crank off a couple shots at the hare and hit it, but didn't kill it. There was bunny fur where he had fired, but the hare got himself into some thick small trees across the trail and the chase died in this vicinity. The dogs couldn't find the track or account for the hare as far as we could tell. By now it was two o'clock and because I had to be home by four we quit, and went for a coffee. The dogs ran just O.K. and it sure was cold. Get 'em next time!

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