It was much cooler- I wore a jacket to ward of chiggers ( dont want what my poor mom got!). 60 degrees, and a thin ribbon of mist hung over the tassles of the corn. It felt like September. Although we unkennelled the hounds at 5:15am, it wasn't until almost 6 before the pack roused a pilot skulking around the stalks. Since I never laid eyes on him, I cant say for certain whether it was the same one or not. Freddie viewed him one time as he busted across a dirt lane, and I believe this was the only view of the morning. We were spread out on three of the four sides of the country. I was on Wilhelm Road. Freddie told me I;d never hear them there. Five minutes later, the pack is roaring in the woods about a hundred yards from where I was standing. Bobby and Freddie radioed they couldnt hear a thing....I told them where the pack was headed and Bobby radioed he was on his way.
The pack left the corn at Squirrely Hill, ran thru the woods near the "junk cars", crossed under some power lines s and kept on going towards another huge expanse of corn near "the crazy ladies' place".( Gotta love the landmark names, yes?!). The corn is irrigated here, and towered over my head. No chance of being able to see corn stalks moving to help locate the hounds over here. We had to rely on cry only. To make it more interesting, the pack had split. Some hounds could be heard running along the branch almost to the Dead End, while the larger bunch was out in the middle of this freaking HUGE field. Wonderful. They had been running for almost an hour at this point, and although the sun was just beginning it's climb above the horizon, the temps were rising. I had to shed the jacket, and along with it I shed any thoughts about chiggers or mosquitoes. All I had on my mind now was getting close enough to those hounds to get them stopped. We were out of the Squirrely Hill country again, but on the west side (not the east side like Wednesday), and this fox was definitely NOT planning on making a swing back.
Freddy radioed that he got the 2 1/2 cple running the fox near Dead End stopped and loaded: " all of yours, Janice, except for the black backed bitch"(Marilyn). His Travis and Dina made up the balance of that little bunch. Travis......yeah, I think I know how THAT split happened...LOL!
Not 10 minutes later, Bobby and I hear the other bunch coming towards us.What a lucky break. His dog Part Time was up ahead with a few others and Bobby stayed parallel to them on the road, hoping the fox would come closer to it before he'd have to try to break them. They couldnt have been more than 30 feet inside that corn, but their pilot must have heard us on the road and was beginning to veer away from it. "THEY ARENT GONNA GET ANY CLOSER, BOBBY!" He had his pistol , I didnt have mine. BANG.
A few hollers and the first couple of rows of corn began to rustle back and forth in an assortment of places as hounds worked their way to us. All jumped in Bobby's truck except for Part-Time, who was still trailing his fox and was now a good hundred yards away.Good old Part Time. Sigh. A great fox dog , but tougher to break than Marney, most times. Which is my saving grace seeing as I got Marney from Bobby.
As Bobby raced off to catch up with his darling Party, I heard more hounds coming from deeper in the corn.
I stayed put and broke those five and was glad to see Marilyn come flying to the sound of my horn. I was loaded. Unless you have your own hounds , you'll never quite get just how GOOD that feels....
So, it's now almost 6:30am,. All hounds are loaded save for Freddie's Lily and Bobby's Pearl. Both young gyps. We re-grouped back where we had turned out, and for a brief moment, the couple could be heard running their own fox in the middle of the Squirrley Hill corn. Pearlie-girl and Lily ran another 45 minutes on their own. I usually stick around until the last hound is loaded, but not this morning . I was fighting an intestinal virus which decided to peak this very morning.... 'nuff said about that.
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