Monday January 28 2008....We got a light snow fall yesterday and ended up with 2 inches of fluff. HALLELUIA!!! Hunts on for today. BUT!!! "WOE IS ME".....Oh it's not what you might think after reading what we've chronicled about our last several outings. Yesterday after Church, we went to the gym and Christopher and I did some weight lifting; specifically a leg routine??? Leg presses at 550#'s followed by leg extensions, hamstring curls and calf raises all to fatigue. NOT EASY!! Whew I'm bushed just writing about it.
"Trooper" and I hit the woods with HANNAH and our pup LUKE under clear skies with a temperature of 12 degrees and a wind coming up. We wished for some running today after the disasters of the last few outings.
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!!!!! YOU JUST MIGHT GET IT!!!!
We hunted a cover we hunted a week ago 'cause it's easy walking in and hunting off the snow machine trail shown in the picture. Good idea anyway! We walked quite a ways and never cut a track crossing the trail, so we decided to turn them loose and make a circle back to the trail we walked in on. We'd go somewhere else if we didn't get a start pretty quick. A couple hundred yards off the trail I struck a bunch of tracks and radioed REGGIE to let him know there were a few hare around so we'd hold up here. It wasn't 5 minutes before both hounds opened up and a hunt was on. I had "shoe'd" in quite a ways and decided to head away from the dogs figuring that they'd circle the critter toward the snow machine trail where they crossed a lot last week. GOOD PLAN! Except the rabbit decided to go the other way and circle there. Reggie took a stand where he was the other day and all we saw was snow falling from the trees because of the blowing winds.
The dogs ran great where nobody was! I said to myself, "SELF" we're in the wrong place, so let's snowshoe WAY DOWN the other end and shoot the rabbit. GOOD PLAN!!! Except that by the time I got to where I should've been 30 minutes before, the hunt had circled around ending up to where I had just come from. Reggie had left his stand and headed for the dogs. This area has kind've a horseshoe shape swamp, with high ground inside the horseshoe shape. So when you get to one end, you can't hear what's going on at the other end because of the hill. NICE!!!! Dogs finally running good and I can't get to hear it.
To make matters worse Reggie called on the phone to say that the dogs had crossed the snow machine trail we came in on. I get on my "horse" and start pushing the snowshoes, but by the time I get back out to the trail the dogs are on a loss. The hunt gets picky where it was all tracked up in a stand of small pines where it was all shaded. It felt much colder in this spot and scenting changed a lot that's for sure. Luke was struggling to run with HANNAH 'cause he was running behind her most of the time and she obliterated the entire track leaving little or nothing for him to smell. In fact he was making things harder for her too when he cast in front looking for the line. I decided to pick him up to give her a better chance to perform and this proved to be a good move. The pup just isn't ready to run behind in these sort of conditions. WOE IS ME!!!! My legs are weary from yesterdays workout and now I have a long walk out to the truck on them "cussed" snowshoes!!!! But the pup is better off in the truck right now and "you gotta do what you gotta do"!
We're like 2 1/2 hours into this hunt by now and with all the running we haven't seen this CRAZY running rabbit. On our way in this morning we put 2 coyotes out of this cover as far as we could tell and there were a lot of "yote" tracks everywhere. We figured that the coyotes were harrassing the hare enough, making them run pretty erratic patterns sometimes, and this one was doing just that.
When I returned to the woods REGGIE told me on the radio where she was and pretty soon I could hear her too.
To make a long story short, the dog put that rabbit all over the place until finally he crossed the upper end of a beaver pond in the area and on up a big hill. Only two places to stand when they go up that hill. One stand on one end of the pond near a little brook that feeds the pond, and the other stand where the little brook comes out of the pond. When he comes back he has to cross one of these spots to get to where he had come from. By the time Reggie gets on stand on one end and I on the other end she's out of hearing. MORE FUN TIME LISTENING TO NOTHING!!!!! No sense moving, if she loses it she'll come back looking for us eventually. If she runs it, dead bunny. After all us AARP's are in the right place???
After a long wait I could barely hear her. SHE'S A COMING BACK!!!! Reginald calls to tell me he could hear her and the run is heading his way. I called back to tell him that if the hare gets by him to pick her up. My legs were tired from the 4 hours of snowshoeing up and down and all around this place. And I didn't want to have to snowshoe all that way back to where we had been earlier.
I can hear her pounding and not missing a beat heading toward "the Trooper". He calls on the radio to say that the hare got by him. WHOA!!! No sense me staying here as he's gonna catch her so I double time it across the pond toward him in case he needed help catching her. BUT!!!! Don't you just hate that word. I didn't know that Reggie had moved up a ways from the pond into the woods toward the hill, and when he said it got by him I figured it went to his right, around that end of the pond, but the hare had made a little maneuver and got by him to his left.
Reggie waited to hear me shoot 'cause I'm right where I'm suppose to be, HE THINKS!!!!! BUT I HAD LEFT THE STAND!!!!
Now I'm part way out on the pond and I hear her pounding, going right to left. OH OH!!! I doubled back as fast as I could, just in time to see her running across the very spot I had been standing in minutes before!!!!!!
A 4 1/2 hour run and no bunny. WE WISHED FOR A RUN AND WE GOT ONE!! I was bushed, but it was all worth it getting this great run and I'll take one of these even if I have to crawl, ANY TIME!!!!!!

Saturday January 26 2008....Took the kids out for a hunt today but it turned out to be the worst day of the year. Two degree temperature in the morning on an abrasive crumbly crust. Dogs break through and bunny doesn't leave a mark, the same as it's been for a number of days now. Forecasting light snow tomorrow so all we can do is get better because right now we're hugging the bottom of the barrel.

Wednesday January 23 2008....Hunting conditions continue to plague us. These last 5-6 weeks or so have been very difficult to say the least. Today proved to be NO DIFFERENT! We were suppose to get 1-2 inches of snow last night, so Reggie and I made plans to hunt. When I got up there was NO NEW SNOW. The crusty surface outside was haunting us. It would be strong enough to hold a mouse, a squirrel or a hare, but not a beagle. It was about 3/4 of an inch thick and very abrasive!!! Well, we decided to go for a while anyway. I hate to run the dogs too long on this crust 'cause I don't want to cut the dog, so we'll try it only for a while.
We hit the woods on a clear day with not a lot of wind and a temperature of 24 degrees. The air is very dry at a 30 percent dew point. We walked into a cover a half a mile or so and thought we'd start there and hunt our way out. We cast the dog into a cover we hunted earlier this year where there was a lot water bushes and beaten down tall grasses. The snow was layered on top of the vegetation and bushes that created many air pockets underneath. As the hound moved about in some places the snow crumbled under her making movement difficult. In some places she could move around OK ,but her underside was almost always dragging over the broken up crust.
About ten minutes after being cast she started a hare and ran it with some difficulty. I could tell by the sound of her bark that scent was not strong. Nonetheless she stayed with it, moving over a frozen up everything. I took a picture of her coming by me moving the line where the hare had crossed over the unblemished white carpet of snow. We wouldn't hear any of that driving music today, but that's the way it goes in the north country hunting the snowshoe hare. Not many good days as a rule and when we get one, we make the most of it. HANNAH is really a good hound, but the last few weeks have been a test to say the least. After a while of slow going I managed to dump the hare in some thick stuff and held my breath while pulling the trigger as I recalled my poor shooting performance of the other day.
We got a second hare going and this one she ran better, but still struggled to put any amount of authority into the chase. Reggie got a look at this one about 45 minutes into this run, but couldn't get off a shot. Eventually she lost the hare but I thought she had done pretty well given the situation we were hunting in.
Our extended weather forecast calls for similar weather to what we had today. And that means poor conditions around here for at least a week or so. Hopefully we can locate a place to go to, where the conditions are more favorable???

Thursday January 17 2008....Woe is me! Woe is me! Will it ever end. One thing or another continues to plague us. Today it's seven degrees colder than yesterday and nothing else has changed. It was minus 2 degrees at Reggies early in the morning but had warmed up to 2 degrees when I got to his place for another hunt. They're forecasting rain tomorrow to be followed by cold weather so we'll face crust again shortly??
We downed a few cups of "joe" and rehashed yesterdays hunt. Yesterday was tough, but we had done about as well as we could've given the circumstances. Today would be harder we thought. Here we go again with them "blasted snowshoes". Once again we had HANNAH and she was raring to go. We tried a new cover we hadn't hunted for a few years and thank God we could get into most of it from a well groomed snow machine trail. A quarter of a mile in we cut a few tracks and let the dog go. It didn't take more than 10 minutes before she opened up and her bark had some authority in it. I anticipated a short drive then a check, then a short drive and another check, and so on to a loss! BUT, that didn't happen as she drove steadily. There was still snow on the trees and hearing was somewhat of a hindrance again but the hound stayed closs enough to barely hear before she headed back. Reggie and I took positions where they normally cross but the hare got by both of us. She checked once she hit the area where she had been through earlier and I figured here we go again with a loss. BUT that didn't happen as she found it again and off she went moving steadily forward.
This scenario went this way for another 2 hours and the hare would've died earlier if the two AARP's trying to get a bead on the critter had been able to guess better. Each time we moved the hare differed his pattern enough to get by us. Finally I decided to go to a spot he had crossed before and just wait. I could tell by the tone of the hounds voice that she could smell the hare better than yesterday in spite of the colder temperature. HOW DO YOU FIGURE IT!!!
At about the two hour mark I could hear HANNAH way off but coming in my direction. To my right was some good cover and to my left it was fairly open as the snows here had knocked down the swale grass leaving the area more exposed than normal. A while later I saw some movement to my left and saw the hare coming in the more open area. I took the "choke chain" (safety) off the TERMINATOR and in my mind counted this rabbit dead and the finish of a really good run. I made a great shot yesterday and this one is a "piece of cake". When we came in I only put 3 shells in the gun and it can hold 4. WOE IS ME!.......KAPOW..KAPOW....the hare keeps going but not that fast. KAPOOOWWW once again and the hare takes a few hops and stops 20 yards away from me in the open. HOWEVER "THE TERMINATOR" is out of pellets as I look a the breach locked open. More AARP moves, as I failed to kill the bunny, then failed earlier to fully load THE TERMINATOR. The hare sat there long enough for me to get another shell out and slap it in the chamber and get off a snap shot at bre'r hare, but miss AGAIN!
The hound runs by me and heads for the other side of this cover where REGGIE is EAGERLY waiting. I get on the two way and tell him that Mr Bunny is heading his way along the edge of the small ridge where we were located. Minutes later KAFLOOW...KAFLOOWW the Ruger O/U unloads but no hoots and the run continues. "What..what"!! Was that another miss??
WOE IS ME...WOE IS ME....We get tough running yesterday and kill three bunnies...today we thought it would be tougher and we get better running BUT THE AARPS can't shoot straight!!!! I did take a bit of fur out of the bunny with my barrage but saw no blood. After Reggie missed (oops did I say miss) HANNAH pushed the hare across the snow machine trail about 300 yards and stopped running. A while later she showed up as if to say that hunts over. She either caught the thing or he crawled under some brush somewhere we think, and that finished a pretty good run on a tough day.
"One of these days Alice" One of these days", pow right in the kisser. The rabbits will come good, the hounds will run good, and the hunters will shoot good. ONE OF THESE DAYS!

Wednesday January 16 2008....Monday we got slammed with another 12 inches of snow so yesterday we plowed and shoveled the stuff most of the morning. Today Reggie and I hit the woods around his place where he was lucky enough to pile up 14 inches in his driveway. YUK!! It was a cold nine degrees as I drove the 15 miles to his place under clear skies, the dew point a dry 12 percent and very little wind. We figured another hard hunt today and we would not be disappointed. I took just HANNAH for with the deep powder we had another dog along would just be counter productive.
We figured today we would scout out a new spot that we deer hunt a lot and where we'd seen a fair amount of bunny droppings on the bare ground months ago. We had a long snowshoe hike in so we just poked along at an AARP"s pace to our hunt site. We figured that we'd see alot of tracks crossing the tote road we walked in on, but only cut one track the long distance that we walked. Well that ain't good! We cut the hound loose and worked our way into some "stool oaks". That's what we call 'em up this way, but most people know them as scrub oaks. These little short oak bushes just love to eat hunting jackets. Put a week of hunting in these things and you can get a new wardrobe.
Off the tote road a ways we cut a few tracks and then found a few runs that the hare had used since Mondays storm. A few minutes later HANNAH opened up and a circle began to form. Reggie went left and I went right. What we do in these conditions is find one of those rabbit runs as we call them, that the hare have used since the last storm and wait. The hound ran pretty steady and took the rabbit around and came down the run Reggie was watching and died. The hound kept coming after the shot was fired and ran up to the dead hare just like she's suppose to.

We kept working toward a big bog we knew about and she got another bunny going. She ran this rabbit quite a ways away from us before he circled back and though she checked a few times she took it back to us but we didn't see the thing. About now a little wind came up and was knocking some of the snow off the trees, so we were seeing white movement all the time. Usually you see white movement and it's a bunny. Anyway she pushed the hare away from us again, but this time far enough to cross another tote road and stayed there. I moved up toward her but too late to see the hare cross that road again further up. Actually after he had hit the road he ran up it a ways before crossing but she got lucky I guess and figured out what happened and kept it going. Now she was back to where she started this hare and ended up losing it in all the old tracks made earlier. At times she struggled with this rabbit, then she'd find it again and would drive pretty good. But eventually she lost it.
We worked into some more good cover where another hare got started and she struggled with this hare but never lost it. I'd like to report that she drove well but that was not the case. The deep snow she could push OK because it was real light and fluffy but the cold and the dry made scenting difficult. The snow was still on the trees and seeing was pretty bad. There was enough wind to knock snow off the trees so we had to keep our hoods on or run the risk of getting bombed by a large clump of white stuff. Eventually she got locked on to that hare and pushed the white "fur burger" by Reggie and he, once again dropped the bunny in it's tracks.
We swished around some more in the tough "stool oaks", and Hannah hunted great as she always does. A little while later her whole demeaner changed and she stopped hunting and walked behind me near my snow shoes. WHAT THE HECK WAS THIS??? I went another 10 feet or so and saw where 3 deer had crossed and I could tell that she was preoccupied with the scent coming out of those tracks. I called her across the tracks and continued to move and then she went back to hunting great again. WOW! That was good I thought. A short while later she jumped another hare and ran this one well until the hare ran in front of the bead on the TERMINATOR and I made a fantastic shot at the running hare in a pretty tough situation.
In an instant my mind harkened back to last October when I missed a hare 4 times running at me in the middle of a dirt road. How could I have missed that hare 4 times in a road and then kill this one on a dead run in this thick snowed in cover??? I guess me and the TERMINATOR are getting used to one another!!!

January 12 2008....ABSOLUTELY a horrible day afield today. Dogs couldn't run for beans. It was in the high twenties last night and everything froze up during the night after a week of 40 degree temperatures and a steady rain all day yesterday. We hit the woods with Neal, Wayne, Jake, Christopher, Daniel, myself and our new hunter Doug.
That's Doug holding the young dog LUKE just before we head out for a pretty long walk into the cover we want to hunt today. Doug is 10 years old and is of legal age to hunt in Maine and his apprenticeship will begin by tagging along without a gun so he can get some first hand instruction and a wee bit of experience. In a few weeks we'll let him carry an empty gun around and start the safety speeches that will come down on him HARD! If the situation is right, he'll be allowed to load the gun and even fire at a hare if the opportunity avails itself. BUT! He will not be able to walk around with a loaded gun for quite a while.
After we had cast the four hounds, CHASE, NYNAH, HANNAH and LUKE it didn't take too long to get a start, with CHASE making the find and getting the hunt going. However the dogs had a hard time right from the "git go" and never really put up much of a sustained run. The day was beautiful with no wind, with an air temperature around 38 degrees. However nothing in the shade melted or soften at all and scenting was without a doubt poor. Or at least these dogs couldn't handle the conditions we had in the beginning and it never improved a whole lot the rest of the day
On one occasion Luke got the start and took the line pretty good before the others reached him and the group of hounds made their way together sounding good. I thought we were going to get some good running finally, but the breaks just were not going our way for a month now. This hare decided to take a hike across a big bog that displayed a lot of running water with old snow and ice covering the rest of it. On the other side, the dogs were running but struggling too much to push the hare. Doug was with me, but nevertheless we had to go to across this mess to catch the dogs. A tricky thing to do with a little kid tagging along. We got lucky and found our way across and caught all 4 dogs. CHASE came to me with his GARMIN tracking vest missing. This GARMIN tracking system works great as far as the communication between the hand held and the transmitter goes, but the transmitter portion carried by the hound is of a poor design. Neal came across the bog after a while and he used his "hand held" to locate the vest. This part works great, but nothing I would pay for right now. GARMIN people NEED to redesign this!!!!
With the dogs corraled we inched our way back across the bog the way we came across it and did it without getting wet. With all the running water here, a dog could easily drown. Normally all this would be frozen over but we've had some very strange weather these last 4 weeks or so.
Once we got back to the other side Neal decided to call it a day, so me and the "THREE YUTES" stayed to try another rabbit. Doug and I worked the dogs and Danny and Christopher took some stands along the tote road we walked in on. Both hounds hunt great and handle really well. Pretty soon they opened in unison and another run got going. But the pattern repeated itself with break downs and short drives. Eventually they lost this hare too. The dogs just couldn't handle the mostly hard crusty surface today and HANNAH was bleeding from cut feet. We were in a long ways so I told the kids we were heading out and to catch the dogs. That's what we did.
I'd like to say how great the dogs ran but like always I just tell it like it is. Today we were busted!!!!

January 8, 2008....My LOVE/HATE relationship continues with those pesky snowshoes after another tough day in the woods with them things hooked on to my boots . A week ago we were on deep powder with some below zero temperatures and now we're on water soaked soft snow with 50 degree temperatures. But you still can't hunt without the snowshoes! Today conditions went to the other extreme with the soft wet snow sticking to the snow shoes or the snow falling back on top of the "shoes" after each step. Reggie and I hit the woods about mid morning and drove a short distance for a hunt. We had HANNAH and the young guy LUKE. We weren't in the woods more than 10 minutes when both hounds opened in unison. The snow was soft and wet and fairly deep. The snow was heavy enough that the dogs never dropped down into the snow any deeper than their under side. They still had to work fairly hard but mobility was not a major detriment. Scent is fickle as all get out and hard to predict from hunt to hunt as to just what we will encounter.
We've hunted this small thicket many times in the past, so after the start I headed to a known good crossing and Reggie did likewise. I hunkered down in a small gulley where I could see straight ahead about 30 yards and to my left about 20 yards. As I settled down to keep a good watch on both crossings the air changed a bit and the gulley filled with fog???? I could look up and see a nice clear blue sky above but at ground level I couldn't see more than 15 yards in either direction. WEIRD!! We decided to let them run a while before we shot the hare anyway. As if we had control of the death of this bunny as it turned out. The dogs ran well at times and faltered at times. But they kept the critter going and everytime Reggie and I moved it seemed that we guessed wrong. HANNAH ran most of the front and the pup stayed with her and chipped in nicely on some of the check work. Finally at the two hour mark I saw bre'r rabbit coming my way, zigging and zagging then squatting. As they got closer he'd move by zig zagging some more. That is until THE TERMINATOR reached out and touched him. The rabbit folded up in his tracks and the dogs were up on the hare about the same time as I did. Both dogs worked hard throughout the hunt but scenting wasn't all that great. Were hoping for seasonally cold temperatures to get back in here with about 2-3 inches of new snow on top. LORD make it happen!!

January 5, 2008....Here we go again dealing with the wrath of mother nature. Weather conditions in the winter more often than not dictate the success of a day hunting for the snowshoe hare. Today we had to confront with DEPTH OF SNOW. Some days it's wind, or rain, or cold, or ice, or crust, or temperature. Or a combination of any of the conditions just mentioned. We knew it would be a tough day today so we opted to hunt close to home even though hare aren't plentiful around here. Why travel a hundred miles to somewhere else just to face the same situation?

We last hunted 10 days ago on a bad crust and since then we've gotten TWO (2) ten inch snow storms, followed by below zero temperatures. What we need is some GLOBAL WARMING! Al Gore are you listening?

We hit the woods with an air temperature of twelve degrees and it felt like a heat wave compared to what it's been lately. Just as we suspected the depth of snow created a major problem for the dogs. Then we couldn't find a rabbit. In fact we couldn't even find a track. We wallowed around on them "dang blasted" snowshoes and that's always a trick on deep snow. It took us nearly two hours to jump a hare and then the dogs ran it for only 15 minutes to a dead loss. We had just HANNAH and CHASE once again and the short run went real well until they reached the alder bog nearby. The nearly 40 inches of snow that's dropped in this area since early December created a major problem for the dogs. The alder bushes and tall grass kept the snow from settling at all and the moving water underneath created many deep pocket like holes just about everywhere as you can see in the photo. These holes are about 4 feet deep and the dogs would slid into them if they got near their edges. Anyway they lost the rabbit. Neal and Wayne had to leave early so they caught CHASE and headed out. I caught HANNAH, so Reggie and I with Christopher and Joshua would strike out away from the bog and kill some more time in the woods with just HANNAH. It was a very nice day to hunt. Clear skies, no wind, air temperature about 25 degrees in the afternoon, soft snow but just a lot of it!!

About 15 minutes later HANNAH jumped a hare and took it out with a lot of authority. She ran this hare steady for 30 minutes before she checked. She found it again after a few minutes and pushed the hare quite a ways from us. We moved with the hunt and caught up to her in an area she had circled the hare several times before we reached her. Traveling can be slow at times with snowshoes on. As I cut toward her I ran across Reggie who was already posted on a good crossing, so I moved down a ways from him. We had this spot covered, but bre'r rabbit extended his circle far beyond what they normally do here this time of year and never offered us a glimpse of his pretty face.
We knew by the way the run was going that she would push the hare across a tote road some 300 yards away, so we moved toward her. The hare ran up to the tote road, but never crossed it and when we got to the road she had checked. A few minutes later she hit the line again and drove the hare straight away from us toward the spot that Reggie and I just left 20 minutes before. OWW Oww Oww Oww and so on she tongued without a let up. I decided to cut straight at her as Reggie had the right flank covered. The two kids stayed on the tote road. But the way she was going I knew she was heading towards some houses near a main road since we deer hunt here all the time. I stayed behind her as best I could and if she cut right Reggie would get a shot. But the hare never changed course and headed for those houses. I could double time it when I had to with these long slender 'shoes I had on and could make up ground on her moving faster than she could move forward as the snow was always just under her chin or higher. I didn't want her running near them houses! She checked just ahead of me and I kept shoeing towards her. Pretty soon I broke out of the woods just behind a house and I could see her in the driveway working the check some 20 feet from the main road. I downed her from a distance and moved up to leash her just a few yards from where the hare had crossed the driveway. I called Reggie and told him I caught her and we decided to call it quits for the day after this good 90 minute run. Since we were near the road we figured we'd take off the snowshoes and head for the truck the long way but the easy way. The dog did great, but the hare won again today. In the driveway I could see that she had circled across here several times while we were down in the woods on a stand. That was a "WASCALLY WABBIT"!
The kids were instructed to snowshoe to the truck through the woods. I figured that it would be faster for them to trek out of the woods that way, than try to work all the way around to where Reggie and I were. See how high Joshua's pants are wet! That's the snow line that the "YUTE" wallowed through on his foot and a half long LL BEAN aluminum snowshoes???? But you got to give him an "A" for effort! As it turned out Reggie and I made it back to the truck before the kids got out of the woods. Of course they had to stop to shoot a red squirrel before calling it quits. We headed for the hot dog stand as that's the only thing we'd get today as the "WABBITS" won the battle again today. Just to prove that the "YUTE's" had the "MOXIE" to handle the riggors of a tough snow hunt like the one we just had, is captured by a picture of them drinking a bottle of "MOXIE". 'Cause "You got to have "MOXIE" to drink "MOXIE"".
The day began on a sort of a sorry note but we ended up with a really nice run by the young dog and had we not run that hare amongst those houses we would've hunted longer. Not only that I had had just about enough of thosed "cussed" snowshoes. However without them you just can't hunt, plain and simple. One of these days the conditions will allow us to hunt on a normal day and we'll see what's in store for the Varying Hare!!!!

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