March in January...

....as in, it felt almost Spring-like today.  The temp was 39F degrees at the 8:30am draw into Johnny-boy's thicket. There was an ethereal mist/fog that lingered until the sun was well above the horizon,  due to the cold ground temperature after our Artic blast  of the past 8 days.. (There was still quite a bit of snow on the ground in the woods, and all of the  standing water was frozen solid.)  Winds were out of the SW, portending a  quick warm-up to almost 60degrees by early afternoon.

The woods we hunted today is to the right. Delaware ( No -can -go due to deer season) is  1/4 mile across this field to the left!

The flooded covert - that is all ice under that snow

At 8:39,  hounds opened in the "big woods", and for the next hour, our 18 couple ran hard and fast in spite of the challenging conditions. The only checks occurred  when the fox led them through a particularly  (frozen) swampy area of this "big woods", and  that only happened twice.

Charles ran back and forth from "the thicket" to the "big woods" more times than I could count, but I was only in position to capture his fleeting silhouette once.( I was upwind watching a road for a good part of the chase. But after Bobby tally-ho'd the 4th time, I told Tommy he would have to take over my point- I wanted to view this pilot, too!)

Not long after I moved to Bobby's position, the wind changed and we could tell that the pack was moving away from us and into a new area that Charles had not been in prior. One of us had to move-and fast. I  wanted to go, but Bobby beat me to it, so I stayed put in case the fox  made a swing back to the thicket again.  Not 2 minutes after Bobby re-positoned himself at the power-line cutover, I heard him tally-ho. Once.  Then,  5 seconds later, "tally-ho -AGAIN!!"   He viewed two foxes pop out into the cutover, then reverse course  and head back to the thicket .   Dang -that should  have been MY view, lol!!

I stayed put, as I should, and  only a couple minutes later I viewed a fox cross the open from the thicket  to the big woods once more.  The hounds came on this fox and it went to ground  less than a minute later in an earth just inside the covert.  My bet is that  the hounds switched from the dog fox to the vixen when Bobby viewed the pair, and the vixen ran straight to her den.  All hounds were on,  but Bobby's two puppies decided to have a little lark as we were walking them out, so it took an extra 15minutes to get them in and loaded. ,Just after 10am, when all hounds were loaded , a brief  discussion ensued as to whether to hunt on.(Delaware deer season is still on, and we have to be careful not to get too close to the state line -but only a few more days and this firearm season will be OVER  in both states for the year!)

The sun was melting the last visage of winter quickly and I decided I'd rather go home and get old Mel out for a nice hack.instead. Tommy jumped on that to add that he had hay to deliver...and that was that!

 We hunt again on Thursday, when  some hounds from New Jersey are to  join us.
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