TUESDAY, JANUARY 2, 2007..... It's about 2 P.M. right now and Kenny and I are driving north for a two day hunt with JOHN WALDRON and his CHAUNCY CREEK Beagles. It's an overcast sky with an air temperature of 30 degrees and the forecast calls for even warmer weather coming in. We've got on board five hounds, RUTH, HANNAH and Kenny brought along BILLY, BUDDY, and JESSE; all Buckshot Mr Bill bred hounds. About five miles from John's place we see moose at three different places. Looks like they're out licking salt on the side of the road. There's packed snow in the road that has turned to ice and the road crews have salted the roads but little melting had occurred to this point in time anyway. John's already at his place when we arrive and his bungalow is nice and warm with the wood stove going and getting "snug as a bug in a rug" is easy. We get some coffee and a few snacks and a whole bunch of fellowship. John puts a call through to Bob Orr the President of our Beagle club (Salmon Falls River) who is up here hunting out of the Shirley Hawker camp some forty miles away. We're probably "gonna" hook up with him tomorrow and share a hunt.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2007..... We get up at six and John is up rummaging around the kitchen building breakfast. It always starts with coffee and this one would continue to be constructed with bacon, eggs, and toast. We get a call from Bob and he says he will meet us at the camp a bit later in the morning. I decide to run RUTH, Kenny would run BUDDY and John would run JENNY one of his young bitches. After Bob and his crew show up we head for the hills and find a cover to hunt. Now this guy who I mentioned before Shirley Hawker is an avid 74 year old rabbit hunting machine who enjoys the thrill of the chase a whole lot more than the kill. "HAWK" hunts with a Contender handgun and can get it on in hunt scrambling in the bush with the best of 'em just to get a whack at the hare. When we cast the hounds Bob laid down one of his KEITH WHITE bred hounds who would run with ours. Keith is a breeder from Vermont and a good friend of Bob Sweet from that area. Well, as usual, winter hunts are at the mercy of the weather and it can change throughout the day. As we cast the hounds everything is frozen solid. There's about 3 inches of a mixed surface of crusty snow in some places and sheer ice in other places. After a fashion we get a start but the hounds have a lot of difficulty moving the hare with any authority. They keep it going but it's a struggle to get sustained drives established. "It is what it is" and the hounds continue to keep it going but they struggle for everything they get. Some short drives occur only to have it abreviated by some checks. We manage to get some hare dead but the running was not good. The weather was beautiful under clear skies and thirty degree temperatures. We decide to catch the hounds and head to the corral for a bite to eat and to change hounds. We're trying to give all the young hounds some hunting experience and this is the reason for the change. We get a quick sandwich and collar up the other hounds and head out for a new cover. The place we decide to hunt is a bit more exposed to the sun and we hope that the crust and ice might break down a bit under the suns rays, change the scenting, and afford us some better running. But as some know that in the shade on even warmer temperatures, the snow and ice never breaks down. This would be no exception even as the air warmed up to near forty. Now we have HANNAH, BUDDY and John's dog RED to run with Bob's dog TUXEDO a sister to the one Bob ran earlier in the day. The hounds get a start and they now have to run on a variety of snow textures within minutes apart. Ice-crusty snow-soft melted snow and back and forth as they run in and out of sun spots.

LIFE OF A RABBIT HUNTER on snow; not easy. But the dogs run somewhat better now and some sustained drives do occur. On one occasion as I worked my way toward the hounds I met up with the "HAWK" who was putting on a move of his own well away from the road. Not too bad a push for a young guy just 74 years young. You can tell that the "Old Gent" has done this before. We gabbed a bit up there together in the woods and we hashed over the hunt we had in the morning. He said that the hare had run up to some 10 feet from him on one occasion and just sat there. Now 10 feet is within range of the pea-shooter he was hunting with but the "HAWK" decided to let him run. A lot more to the hunt than the kill for this young fella! As the afternoon went on the running get better and we did manage some pretty good chases. After killing one of the hare, the hounds came down driving right to the dead bunny just as pretty as could be and the young dogs HANNAH and BUDDY got a chance to sink their teeth into some fur along with the more experienced RED. About 3:30 P.M. we decided to pick up and call it a day. No matter what the running is when you are with the right people it's always fun!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 4, 2007..... Reveille is held at 6:30 A.M. a bit later than anticipated but we have the whole day. The thermometer is at 30 degrees and the skies are clear. Once again John gets the coffee on the stove and the skillets are out doing their thing. Kenny brought along his male Lab SONNY on the trip and the friendly critter was a lot of fun. In the photo SONNY is looking to John for a hand out and before we broke camp he got plenty of hand outs. You know how that goes! Once again John does big at the breakfast making business and we eventually get out of the cabin to hunt. We decide to hunt RUTH, JESSE, and ANNIE one of Johns females, and we'd try the same place that we hunted yesterday morning as there were ample amount of hare there. Well wouldn't you know it. We hadn't cut the dogs loose in that cover a minute and RUTH opens up and is quickly joined by ANNIE and JESSE, and the dogs get into a drive. They reach the end of the cover and straight way keep running up the side of this mountain going away from us. Now a hare shoudn't have left the safety of the cover at this time of the year so I was a bit suspect as to what they were running. I get on my horse and start following the mutts. I cut their track but I couldn't see anything other than dog tracks breaking through the icy crust. They kept going and going and I follwed as best I could and on the radio I told John and Kenny that we should try to catch the dogs. Easier said than done. The tree line in the photo gives the illusion that the trees are the top of the hill but actually they are only a quarter of the way up as the mountain continued it's elevation beyong the view of this camera. The hounds run north then turn a bit following the grade of the mountain heading west. Then they are going south a period of time, then east twenty minutes or so. I kept contact with John on the radio and Kenny was up on the mountain trying to catch the hounds with me. An Hour and a half after all this started it was evident that the dogs had gone full circle and were heading back from whence they began earlier. John called to say he caught RUTH and that the other dogs were somewhere near him. I scooted down the mountain to help get the other hounds and as I did I cut the dogs tracks once again in the softer snow and there I saw a very clear impression of what they were chasing. A Bobcat! Thousands of a acreas of woods and we walked into a 'cat. It took a while to get everybody caught and after that we headed back to camp to change dogs and get a drink.
Again we choose to hunt the same cover as the one we hit yesterday afternoon. We had HANNAH, BILLY and Johns dog CLINT, a Vermont bred hound. It didn't take too long to get a start in some pretty good cover and you could tell right off that the scenting had gotten better. We did some RUN-N-GUN hunting for a bunch of hours and bunnies paid the price. We got some good driving runs and toward the late afternoon Kenny let fly a barrage at a hare and pulled a bit of fur out of his hide. That did it for this rabbit as he then changed his pattern and headed away from us and nearly out of hearing. They stayed well away from us for some time and I decided to move figuring the hare was not coming back. It took me a half an hour to maneuver into position only to have gotten "on stand" over there too late but saw the dogs come running by. Now instead of circling in this area where he had been the last forty five minutes, the critter heads all the way back to where Kenny shot earlier. That moved left me out of the hunt for quite some time. By the time I got back to "ground zero" it was about time to catch the hounds and this bunny would not be put into anybody's pocket today. But the hunt went great and even the cat run earlier was a neat experience as I've never run a cat before. We got out of the woods just in time to witness a spectacular view of the beauty of GOD's great creation.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 2007.....Pretty cold this morning at 16 degrees under cloudy skies with bare ground and a consistant wind of about 10 MPH. January 11 and we're still without snow as I write this. We've done most of our hunting the last 5 weeks on snow because we traveled northwest in the State. Today is a local hunt that will present plenty of challenges. Bunnies run wild, the swamps are frozen and the forest floor is dry as a bone with a dew point at 0 degrees which is extremely dry. Just myself and Reggie today with his dog PETE and I have his younger brother TIMMY and the young female HANNAH. We got lucky after a short time in the woods, as HANNAH opened a few times then worked a cold trail a short ways, then the two males opened with her and they took off. The hare ran straight way to a large swampy thicket near a small pond in the area and of course ice of varying thicknesses covered everything that had been water. PETE is grossly overweight/under trained and at 13 years of age he got left out of the hunt. But he never stopped hunting. As TIM and HANNAH ran to the far side of this area, Pete jumped a stray rabbit for himself and put the thing right by me after a fashion, but I didn't shoot the hare as I wanted to pile the thing with all the dogs together. As it turned out PETE's hare ran out of the swamp over an open hard wood ridge and to another swamp a short ways away. HANNAH and TIM ran theirs out of hearing, so I took off to get them so the three could go it together. I managed to catch the dogs after a lot of walking and returned to hark them in to Pete, who still had his bunny on the run. The trio managed to keep the hare going on the ice for some time in a slow controlled fashion, then hit some high ground and pushed it pretty good. I had seen this hare three times earlier, but his fourth pass by me led to his demise as a three shot volley dumped the fleeting rabbit. The "TOOLMAN" was first to get to the dead bunny and get a few chomps on it before the other two "got some fur" too. This run lasted two hours and fifteen minutes over some tough scenting terrain as the three dogs worked real well together to get it done. We got another lenghty run where the hare took the dogs out of hearing after getting shot at a couple times. But when we got a chance to catch them, we did as this hunt about wore out the hunters trying to cut off the wild running hare. Snow coming next week!!!!!

SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2007.....We've got a dark cloudy morning right now at 34 degrees, with wet ground thanks to some light rain we got last night. We're gonna do a local hunt today and given the conditions finding rabbits will be the only issue. Its suppose to warm up to 40 degrees so things are kind've ideal. I picked up Reginald at 8 A.M. with Christopher, Daniel and Joshua aboard with our one hound HANNAH. The plan is to meet up with Neal and Wayne to hunt a place that was reported to hold a lot of hare. Neal's friend Jim Durgin, an avid deer hunter came along to show us this place where he had seen a lot of bunnies while hunting for "Rudolph". Neal brought NYNAH who is just coming out of her heat cycle and he also brought an older dog of his named HEIDI. "CHASE", Neal's man dog, didn't make this hunt and "woe is he", 'cause he missed a blast; many blasts!
This report "ain't gonna be pretty" as the fur was gonna fly and we didn't "harvest" a thing. Don't, don't, don't jump to conclusions now. The fur flew alright but bunnies didn't get harvested they got KILLED!!! There will be NO political correctness on any pages you read written with a "LEB CITY" name attached to it. We are conscientious responsible hunters who respect nature and all it's creatures while exercising our right to bear arms and take wildlife within the confines of the law. We also understand that conservation practices have to be followed in order to provided ample amounts of game for future hunts. That said rabbits died!
Jim knew his stuff and guided us into a real "honey hole". About 15 seconds after casting the hounds HANNAH opened up just 30 feet into the woods; "and there off" as the starter might say at the Kentucky derby. Coming to you next might be the only accurate rendition of one chase of the hunt that I can replay, 'cause after this first rabbit, it gets complicated. The dogs pounded and pushed the hare for a big swing and with the young hounds in there screaming, the first thing you'd think of is DEER. And there were plenty of deer sign here. In fact on one run we saw a deer right in close to us and the dogs, but the young hounds ran straight. The trio still pounding steady, "wheeled" their way back toward the hunters. Any new place you hunt is just pot luck as far as where to stand goes, so I picked a likely spot and let 'em come. The cover in this place was mostly small saplings grown tightly together; maples, poplar, birches and not a lot of green growth. You could see movement a long ways away but killing shots would still be in the usual ranges of 30 yards or less. Anyway, I see the hare coming some forty yards away so I pull up on the "fur patch" and let him come. Hippty hopping at a pretty good pace a shot rings out over yonder and the bunny stops in his tracks. Clean miss! I figure whoever shot will try again or the hare will come flying at me so I can whack him. POOOooowwww! A second shot is fired and the bunny dies. Christopher gets the first bunny of the day. Now hunting with the three "YUTES" today did NOT pass uneventfully. And it would take a pretty good "bean counter" to lay out an accurate reannactment of the all the stuff that would happen over the next five hours. And I ain't a gonna try to do it here with my one finger on the keyboard. If I told you that the three kids fired a box of shells between them on this hunt I'd be lying. BUT!!! If I told you that they fired ALL but one shell out of a box I'd be right on. Of course us older kids got into burning some powder too! Because of the type of cover we were in, you could see movement pretty far off with this white on brown contrast , but the chances of drving some lead shot through all the small trees at a running bunny from a distance was pretty slim. The boys got a lesson on selective shooting.
Bunnies came easy and the runs were fast, furious and of short duration. As the AKC standard states the BEAGLE is primarily a hunting dog, and these dogs were living up to that standard. On and on it went RUN-N-GUN style! After a pretty good and long dose of this rabbit after rabbit thing we kinda figured is was time to stop and leave an ample supply for next year. Rabbits came real good and during some of the chases Wayne got on a streak of jumping other bunnys before the one flying around ahead of the dogs expired. "Hey"! Wayne would say, when you shoot that one I have another one right here. And so it went and by two fifteen we called it quits.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 2007.....It's 24 degrees out right now with high winds and a crumbly crusty snow cover. To make matters worse the dew point is -3 degrees which is unbelievebly dry. We'll hunt locally and meet at Reggie's house at 8:30 A.M. It'll be me, Reggie, Neal and the three "YUTES" Christopher, Joshua, and Daniel. The hounds are NYNAH, HANNAH and HEIDI the same three we hunted last week. But this hunt is in marked contrast weather wise compared to last weeks weather. We take a hike deep into a secluded wooded area and cast the hounds. After a while a hare is jumped but the hounds have a very difficult time keeping it going. The two young dogs NYNAH and HANNAH haven't seen these kind of conditions yet and today they are struggling. The older dog HEIDI isn't doing any better. Sure wish we had RUTH and CHASE today but the young hounds have to learn and they don't learn in the kennel. The dogs displayed the nose to run OK but they just didn't slow down to walk it out. Instead they tried to move too fast and basically couldn't gear down. Just an over competetive style today and brother that wasn't "gonna" work.
The wind blew very hard just as forecasted and the morning went on with no success in putting on a sustained run. We decided to call it quits by noon and the temperature was dropping and the wind was picking up. So we headed out.

We stopped at a nearby store for a soda and kicked around small talk reminiscing about our hunts so far this year. All in all we'd had a pretty good season so far and we reflected on the many places in the State we've bagged bunnies this season. Today would be my last hunt for a while as I have to go to MASS GENERAL HOSPITAL Monday morning for another series of cancer treatments. It's going to be tough again but "But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I SHALL COME FORTH AS GOLD", Job: 23;10. I decided that on our way home I'd stop to check out a small cover we found while deer hunting that looked promising. The wind continued the blow hard but what the heck this would be time well spent checking this place out. It was now 16 degrees and the wind penetrating. Christopher volunteered to work HANNAH up through a pine thicket and I went with the other two boys deeper into the woods. Hannah jumped a hare and a run got going and she did pretty good alone and settled in to run off her nose and not off her feet. Sometimes you just have to slow down. I always say that on some days if you run half as fast you run twice as good. She struggle with the track but managed to keep it going and grubbed out enough scent to keep the rabbit moving. Thirty minutes into it POOOOooowwww as shot rang out and Christopher hooted up the kill. Well the pup did manage to run some and displayed the nose to handle this tough situation and hopefully learned a bit about slowing down when you have to.
As I leave the woods that I love so much I think upon the LORD that he may give me the Grace to endure the days that are before me and that I may be able to return again to places like this with my grandkids and my friends.
"Withold not thou thy tender mercies from me ,O LORD: let thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me" Psalm 40:11.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2007.....Late Sunday evening the hospital called saying they had to cancel my treatments for the week and they have been recheduled for next Monday the 29th. So that said we planned a hunt for today locally just Reggie and me. It was real cold last and as I travelled to Reggie's house at 8:30 A.M. it's 9 degrees out under clear skies. I brought just HANNAH and Reggie would run the old guy Pete. Pete will be 13 years old in three weeks and looks pretty good given he's out of condition and about 5 pounds overweight. He'll get some exercise and HANNAH will continue her education. The last snow we got was a week ago and it was a cold, light, fluffy, and a dry four inches of it. Its been hard running lately and I gear up for another tough day in the woods. The cold pinches your cheeks but as you move around it isn't too bad. Its forecasted to moderate by this afternoon so the day is normal for this time of year.
Pete still hunts real good and we'll get as much out of him as we can today before we "truck" him. He finds the first rabbit and they sound pretty good together. HANNAH has a nice mouth; real pleasing to listen to. We're in some small pines and the hare tend to stay in this place for the most part during a run. Reggie gets a look at the hare and the bunny skirts out of the pines near him and lines out in a way uncommon to the way they usually run in this cover. We wait a while to see if he'd come back, but no sireee. We move up to where they had been circling and the dogs are struggling a bit but they keep it going. They make two more circles in this spot but the rabbit just gets by both Reggie and me. They do some more running but end up losing the rabbit after a while. We work back toward the original cover and they get a hare going again. Pete is acting tired so I go in and pick him up and take him to the truck. HANNAH is running this rabbit pretty good and even though she's checking some she stays close and keeps the hunt going. She has been a great solo hound on bare ground this past summer; now she has to learn how to do it under tough snow conditions. We get a forty minute run going on this hare before several shots ring out followed by another two shots after that. Got a double hoot out Reggie 'cause as it turned out HANNAH pushed two different hare by the old Trooper and he bagged both of 'em.
We decide to go check out another cover that we might hunt Saturday so we pick up HANNAH and off we go to the new spot. It about twenty degrees out now and just five after twelve. We work up through a place we've hunted many many times over the years and we found quite a few tracks around, but on an old snow bunnies can make a lot of tracks. HANNAH hunts and handles great and for sure this user friendly deportment will assure her many days afield bunny hunting. She jumps another hare and runs it great! She takes it for a big circle and pushes it steady without a drop and then starts coming back our way. I'm in a good spot but there ain't much room to get a shot off when you see him. A flash of white passes by and I snap a quick round at the fleeting bunny and strike the snow some three feet behind him. She comes through with it and keeps pushing. A bit later, Reggie gets a look at the hare but can't get in a shot. Fifteen minutes later I make a nice shot at the bunny running as fast as they go around here and it's over. HANNAH runs to the dying bunny and gets her teeth into the fur and gets a whole lot of praise for her work. We work her around some more cover and she starts again. This next run would be a great run, and for her a "P R" (personal record) in a hunt situation on a cold snow running alone. She ran this hare for nearly two hours before we had to pick her up running. The hare gave her a great chase running far and wide and he got lucky getting by Reggie and I without getting "blasted to smithereens". Just one of those classic runs where everything goes right but the bunny gets away. That's O.K. though as the performance by the young hound was indeed pretty awesome. HALLELUJUA!

SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 2007.....It was three below zero here last night and today I'm hunting with just Reggie, Neal, Christopher, Joshua. We got the dogs "CHASE" and "RUTH". Again this is a local hunt and when we hit the woods at 8:30 A.M. on a ten day old snow, that has the texture of dry sugar, it's "zero degrees" out. We cast the hounds and it took a while to get a start. No cold trailing today. The hounds jump a hare and the run gets off with a lot of difficulty. Its a short push then pick pick pick and then just a bark here and there. For sure our best hounds were having a very hard time keeping the line going and eventually they just lost it. LOST RABBIT "not good", but under these conditions not many run well no matter what you hear. We got another start with the same results and I figured we'd be home early today. We worked the hounds quite a long time before they got another one going. One thing for sure is you keep moving in cold like this just to stay warm. This bunny they were able to stick to though they continued to struggle. They ran this hare across a tote road several times in a flash without drawing gunfire but he tried to pushed his "lucky rabbits feet" one time too many as Neal saw the critter coming and let Joshua take a whack at him. Now Joshua shot over a half a box of shells at bunnies a few weeks ago, but in this instance he was right on.

We decided to try another cover not far away as the dogs seemed to be doing better. It was twenty degrees out now at 1 P.M. but the cold frost was still well entrenched in the sugary textured snow. We got a start right off and the two dogs gave tongue with a bit more force and they were able to hold on to the line much better. Both CHASE and RUTH are sired by the same hound "Fd. Ch. FAM'S MOUNTAIN VIEW BRUNO" and right now are the best two we have. Neal and I each have a young bitch at home with this same bloodline that have trained well all summer and have performed equally good this hunting season. We got some shooting in this cover and after a couple hours of gunning this place we picked up the dogs and headed out. It was 19 degrees out when we quit and still pretty cold.
I won't be able to hunt for a while now with the three week treatment cycle ahead of me. I'm "gonna" miss the hunts with my good friends Reggie, Neal and the kids. Its sure been fun this year.
           "In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths" proverbs 3:6.