ain't dead yet

"We" got 9 at Rutherford today. A good hunt though we beat the bushes pretty hard trying to scare up the nonexistent rabbit that would have taken us into double digits.



Cuz 3 1/2
and in a stunning finish to tie
Plunker 3 1/2
Middle Boy 1
rimfire 1

Details later

Despite Cuz's talk yesterday, he called at 6:30 this morning and wanted to know what I thought. He had stuck his hand out and a drop of rain hit it. I told him it hadn't rained at all out here at Rabbit Run. The consensus was that we would wait an hour and see.
At 7:30 he called back wanting to cancel the hunt because it was to dark and was going to rain sometime today and it was so far to Rutherford and.......

Some days I think about selling the dogs and quitting hunting all together. I have no real weekday hunting partners. Rye has quit hunting, Cuz has only been two-three times this year. Brag works and has taken up (shudder) "golf". The weekends are packed with people
Property is next to impossible to find during deer season. If it wasn't for Plunker and Middle Boy, we wouldn't have hunted all year. Even during February, you're at the mercy of deer hunters who hold the lease and an increasing number of them don't want you to look at the property as you pass by much less hunt it.

I hope the mood passes

One of the good things about hunting in February is all you need are the lighter briar chaps instead of snake chaps since the snakes are safely denned up for winter

Ran on some ADS land and in perfect form, flushed more deer than rabbits. The dogs didn't run them though, only had to thrash a pup with a cap lightly about three times. The pup then decided to run what the crew was running instead of what he was getting thrashed on. The 5 pack ran from 3:30 till 4:45 on what I believe was the same rabbit, it is slightly possible that they swapped rabbits once. No guns were taken, just priming them up for run and gun Saturday hopefully. Could have shot the runner and two sneakers and never got off of a 2 acre size spot.

Long live rabbit season....short as it may be

out near the original site of the Salem Shotwell Covered bridge, a flood of memories washed over me. This hunt was no different.



The ridge that was the setting for Mortal Like Me. The lane where Uncle NoPass and I sat on what neither of us knew at the time was to be his last rabbit hunt. The bowl where the great possum hunt took place. The now overgrown road where Uncle NoPass where showed me his driving skills when we got stuck after telling me a time worn story about wanting to be a driver in the army but he was to good a shot for that.

Some wonder why I take picture after picture on our hunts. They are aids that jar the memories. When I’m gone someone will go through the pictures and it will dawn on them that I’m not in but a few….well someone has to work the camera.
Carry you a camera. The kids grow up, the hunts fade, your partners pass. You’ll be glad you did.

Lucy slept in….again. I loaded the dogs into the boxes on the trailer, but she never came out of the house. I let her sleep.

There were seven of us on todays hunt; Middle Boy, Only Boy, Steve, Donovan, a teat who has hunted with us a couple of times this year and seems to have taken a liking to rabbit hunting, Brag, Plunker and, of course, myself.

Ah, Lucy Lu was such a pretty little puppy.

Now, she looks kinda squat and toady. She was the first pup in Brag and my “Rabbit Journal” pack. All she ever wanted to do was chase rabbits. She ran her first one by herself at the tender age of 12 weeks. Brag and I nearly burst the buttons off of our shirts. But as she grew older it became pretty evident that she wasn’t a full blooded beagle, but part basset. Maybe even part wiener dog. Little short legs, long body and barrel chest, she was just toooo slow to keep up with the pack.

Her best feature is her nose. She can smell on Tuesday where the rabbit on Monday was thinking about going on Wednesday. Lucy can find a rabbit when no one else can, but it just takes her awhile.
Right now, we let her run by herself while we hunt the pack. When Katie retires, I’ll probably start leaving Lucy Lu to keep Katie company. I just don’t have the heart to leave her alone.

Hound update

Hammering Kate: The grand old dame’ of the Rabbit Journal pack at 9 years old. She was Uncle NoPass’s last puppy. Brag inherited her and added her to our pack.
Katie hammers on a hot track with a constant BARK.
She has two bad traits.
Katie thinks that a rabbit hunt is supposed to only be a half day long. At 9, that’s understandable.
She’s fast and thinks that it is her birthright to be at the head of the pack. When she was younger and Dixie and Julie outran her, I saw her circle ahead of the race to get back into the lead. She cut that out after a year or so.
Now she often overruns the track, dragging the other hounds with her. Then there is the milling around and circling until they reacquire.

East Alabama Rabbit Hunters and Souse Eaters Social Club's Martin Luther King Memorial Day Rabbit Hunt was a success, if not in rabbits taken, then in an improvement in the shot to rabbits taken ratio.

The East Alabama Rabbit Hunters and Souse Eaters Social Club's annual Martin Luther King Memorial Day Rabbit Hunt will be at Plunkers since we are bereft of hunting property this year.
It also looks like a sparse crowd though it won't be as bad as when Brag and I first started it and only he and I hunted

is a tree sitter, a deer hunter. He's young and hopefully will come to his senses. He's starting to rabbit hunt a little more, now. He sent a picture of a deer that he shot at Mr. Murphy's and I forwarded it on to a few friends



Seale Fireman replied
Nice where did he get it from and did he tear the car up bad?

Plunker and I had been itching to hunt the “mountain” on the back of his property all year.
Plunker decided that after last year’s hunt we needed at least six hunters to hem the rabbits up.
But more hunters didn’t correlate into a bigger bag count, at least on this hunt
We went 2 for fifteen shots with 8 hunters, if you count the “teats”. And since Donovan, the youngest, killed half of the rabbits, I think we’ll count them.

Part of the problem hunting the “mountain” was that we had to cross two creeks. The first is usually a minor affair. But the second had some of the hunters using redneck waders: trash bags over their legs. I tried my usual theory of “if you move fast enough, the water won’t have time to come in the tops of your boots” Maybe I’ll better luck with that theory if I tied my boots tighter.

my .410 single shot that I got in the third grade

Most of the day this post was going to be titled “Like riding a bike” after Brag’s retort when I asked him if he wanted me to remind him how to rabbit hunt after being absent all season but one other hunt. He promptly blew a couple of shots
But after we went 2 for 15, with yours truly missing three times on the same rabbit, one a sitting shot, I thought that “Best rabbit Hunters in these parts. Why everybody says so” might be more appropriate. Most long term readers know where this line comes from.

Still, I have to say that today’s hunt was a success.
How can I say that?

Tuesday’s rabbit hunt at Mr. Murphy’s (aka Murty’s) near the site of the old Salem-Shotwell covered bridge before a tree fell on it and the city of Opelika made a new bridge for it’s city park out of parts of the old bridge was pretty good. It wasn’t nearly as thick and impenetrable as it once was. The hunt that is. The new bridge? About the only thing it and the original has in common is that the new bridge is mostly made from wood from the old bridge

In attendance for Tuesday’s hunt besides myself and Plunker was Middle Boy, his son “Only Boy”, Middle Boy’s friend Steve and his progeny. Donovan and Peyton.