MARCH STORIES 2004

March 6, 2004 7:55 A.M   It rained most of the night and everything is wet and a fog rolls up out of the snow. Where I live there's not a lot of snow left but 20 miles away where we hunt there's still plenty. Got Tim and Sue to hunt with today as the other hounds of mine Sophie, Ruth and the Preacher are laid up with cut feet. At our club there's still a lot of ice and that's what you get sooner or later when you run on it much. It looks like this day will be washed out soon as the forecast is for more rain later in the day. We pick up Reggie and his hound Pete and head out for a hunt once again. Thus far the weather has been hard against us all season. Winter hunting up here is tough. We cast the hounds and they work this pine lot we're hunting. PINE trees when wet are like sponges. Everything is wet and just walking through the green growth will soak you. I tell Chris to weave his way around the thicker stuff so he wouldn't get so wet but you know kids! In unison the hounds open together and a hunt is on. This time, unlike last week we were running a rabbit and not a deer. They sounded good and they ran good. All bunched up steady and around this pine stand they went. Twenty minutes into the run I get a glimpse of the critter but can't get a shot off. With the fog and my wet eyeglasses, seeing any appreciable distance was difficult. Fun to hear Sue's fast squall mouth in there with the boys. They pounded most of the time with just a few checks. Reggie gets on the radio and alerts Chris to watch out as he just saw the hare pass by him and heading toward Chris, but no shot erupted. So on and on they went, round and round filling the air with music. Normally we might've shot this hare quicker but the wet trees kept us on the fringes of the green growth. An hour and ten minutes later a shot rings out followed by "that little voice" OOOOOWEE. Chris's hoots don't have a lot of thunder in them yet but he's doing good. His hoot signified that he killed the rabbit. As you can see in the photo that fog still has us engulfed and the trees still rained upon us; but a pounding run is worth all this aggravation. We gotta be nuts to do this!

We picked up the hounds after Chris killed that hare and moved to another place down the road easier to hunt given everything was wet. But it didn't turn out that way. Chris covered a tote road and Reggie and I walked the edge of this swampy area. Fog just poured up from out of the ice and snow as we looked for another rabbit to run before calling it a day. We left Sue in the truck on this cast as just two dogs was all we wanted to mess with when it came to round up time. Man, Reggie and I are getting to be "whimps" as father time is getting a grip on us...YUK! Anyway Tim opens up and Pete harks in and off we go. THIS IS THE GOOD NEWS. Pounding, they run a straight line a quarter of a mile away crossing the state road not too far from the truck where we walked in. THE BAD NEWS. We got a "RUNNER" going. We knew we ran the risk of hitting one of them crazy bunny's this time of year and sure enough we had a MARCH HARE underway. The dogs never faltered as these critters basically run circles so big that it's straight line running all the time. BANG, before you know it they're out of hearing. I get to the road and call Reggie and confirm the fact that the hounds had indeed crossed the road. I saw where they crossed and could see the hare track mixed in with the dogs tracks. Reggie and Chris crossed the road a bit later and I had already cut to the dogs with the "tracker" in hand. I reached the top of a high hill and could hear them pounding on the other side. It was tough going as the shade side of the hills in this area and any place where the sun couldn't get through had plenty of snow. Ten to fourteen inches of the slush was common. The hare made a shift and ran all the way back to where Reggie and Chris were posted on a snow machine trail not far from the truck a long ways from where I was. WHOA, almost a kill as the rabbit crossed around a bend in the road about forty yards from Chris but just out of his sight.   We never did get this hare and three hours and ten minutes into this run I had a chance to catch the dogs and finish what was probably the last run of this hunting season for us. NOW all we had to do is walk out of this "slush bowl", bushwhacking a long ways, soaking wet, with the two dogs. At least instead of rain coming in on us this afternoon the sun came out. Weatherman wrong again but at least in our favor for a change. We got two great runs, shot one hare and I wondered if this would be Pete's last bunny. He's ten years old now but still looks great but you never know. Father time has a grip on him too so I had Chris get his picture taken with the dog. Got many great hunts over Pete and his sibblings these past ten years and a lot of great memories. Hope maybe we can get yet a few more with him next year. We shall see!

March 13, 2004 7:55 A.M   I figured that last saturday was our last hunt of the year but Christopher just "nagged" me to death about going "just one more time". Hare are not that plentiful close to home and without powdered snow they can be hard to find. Like walk an hour or more per rabbit. Oh well off we went and hit Reggie's house about 8 O'clock. Chewed the fat a while as usual and watched the turkeys come down to Reggie's orchard to grub for food. About 50 of them things together is pretty awesome to see. Reggie got drawn for a permit to hunt them this spring. HHhhhmmmmm! One turkey hunting another turkey!   Hunting conditions have been deplorable to say the least this winter and today would be no exception. It got quite cold last night for this time of year as temperatures dropped into the teens. By the time we arrived at Reggie's the air temp was twenty five. Not at all that cold but the snow cover was hard as a brick and would support our weight but the "hooker" was the twenty five mile an hour wind that never quit. One of the worst situations to hunt in for any houndman is the wind. Trees wavered to and fro all the day long and scenting was difficult. We had the two brothers once again, Tim and Pete. Sophie is at Tony's to get a couple weeks of running on cottontails to prep for the trials coming up and the other hounds have sore feet from running the ice at the club. Both Pete and Tim can run on this stuff and are very user friendly, and easy to handle in a strong wind. We cast the hounds at 8:45 and after a half an hour of walking around they open in unison. Within five minutes they were out of hearing thanks to the wind and we just held our positions. We'd hear them off and on occasionally, and felt pretty sure they'd stay in the general area unless we got on one of them "CRAZY MARCH HARE" like the one we hit last week. Anyway the dogs ran pretty well over the frozen everything and the occasional spots of bare ground. I put Christopher on a good stand and I moved up to higher ground to help with the hearing. There was a pretty big patch of bare gound near me and I just hung out in wait. The dogs were pretty far from me when I caught sight of a hare coming my way so I just stood motionless. The "snowball" ran right to the middle of that patch of bare ground I was watching and stopped looking my way. Guess he figured nothing could see him? I wondered if this was the hare they were running? I decided to let him go as a run is whole lot better than walking around in the wind looking for another one to run and I wanted Christopher to shoot it anyway. Quite a while later the brace of hounds made their way up to me running this rabbit I let go. BOOOMMmm, a shot rang out and no hoot. The hounds were out of hearing once again so I called on the radio to get the scoop as to what happened on that gunfire. Seems that Chris had thrown a round at the hare about 60 yards away. Too far away for a kill unless you get awfull lucky. About a half an hour later the "TROOPER" fires at a hare and nails it but the hunt continued as this rabbit proved to be a stray. A short while later I watched the hare come down this small gully that was all bare ground. I let him come closer 'till he was well committed into the patch of bare ground. If I missed the first shot I had plenty of room for a follow up shot. But I didn't miss and that was that. The two dogs came down to the dead hare and Tim as usual makes sure the critter has "given up the ghost". Pete would like a sip of water but the little rivulet is frozen over. We walked another long time and got a real good run going but the hare ran into a beaver flowage that was solid ice and the hounds lost it after a half an hour run. The wind never relented so we quit in the early afternoon. Never got much of a break with the weather all of this year and we earned every rabbit we took. But the bottom line still is to have fun and that we always have.

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