A slow, snowy morning ended with a swift, hot fox. 2/11/12 hunt

Although it  never snowed at my farm until late in the day, by the time I drove 20 miles inland on the way to the meet,  it was coming down heavily at 7:30 am.  The temp was 37 degrees at my farm, and  was probably hovering around same when hounds moved off at 8am.   ( It CAN snow when the temp is above 32 degrees F!)

The white stuff was comng down in heavy, big, wet flakes.You can hear it !:

Several times hound opened and trailed briefly during the first two hours.  It kept snowing harder and harder, and I was beginning to think that we might be about to experience our first blank day in ??? I dont know how long.  Personally,  I would'nt blame the foxes for staying holed up in that weather...

Finally, hounds found at 10:15 am.  They chased this red fox for the next  hour and forty five minutes and the longer they ran, the hotter they got up on him.  Charles was viewed crossing over the dirt road in the video 6 times. Everyone got at least one view of him, except for me!  Once, as I was watching one direction where he had come over during his previous loop, that sly sucker crossed right behind me. When Curtis and Bobby, who were standing 200 feet away, tally-ho'ed him and told me how close the fox had been to me, I thought they were joking.  I had to find the fox tracks to convince myself  that they weren't teasing me.  They were not! Darn...but I was able to get up close and personal with the pack as they made that trip over the road, lol!

At about 11:30, our fox tired of this circuitous path and bolted out the south side of the woods to end up over at the  "14 acres".    Several times, he threatened to cross over a paved road that has several blind curves and we had to spread ourselves out to  slow traffic.   Just before noon, as I was watching one of those curves, Tommy and Curtis viewed the fox  cross over a dirt drive, only a few hundred feet in from the blacktop road.  Since the weather was beginning to change for the worse  ( it had stopped snowing for awhile, but  now the temperature was dropping, the wind was picking up, and it was starting to sleet),they held the pack up at the drive.  All were on,  and as Bobby and I raced to help them  we could see the hounds FLYING.  Both of us thought that there would be no stopping them, and we both were kinda hoping that Tommy  and Curtis would fail in their attempt.  But as we pulled into the lane, they were loading their hounds. I jumped out to  get Marney before ANY hound decided to open and take off again.  It was the sensible thing to do, I guess.
Considering the lousy weather, and the slow start, the day ended up with  "all on" running a very hot fox.  We'll be back for that one ...