Hound stuck in a drain pipe!

Tuesday,October 25.  Another beautiful morning,  49 degrees and calm winds when we began the draw @ 8am.  Larry, his uncle, Andy, and Howard were out with us. 12 cple cold-trailed a fox through the woods for about 20minutes. I was positioned on a ditch bank and was waiting as the hounds  made their way towards me. A large tree had fallen over the ditch  which is easily 15 feet wide and the same, or more depth, with about 2 feet of water at the bottom. Hounds trailed the fox to the ditch and over the downed tree to my side.(with a few hounds getting a nice dunk in the water!)  I turned the camera on as they began to feather furiously along the side of the ditch. . Their fox was actually in a drain pipe which ran underneath where my horse and I were standing, and exited into the woods off to the left..  I  turned the camera off, and a few seconds later was surprised by Reynard bolting  out the woods side of the drain pipe..  Some of the smaller hounds followed him through the pipe, while others came overtop, right in front of me ..  I was about to follow them on, when I heard a hound in obvious distress, howling.  It took me a minute to find where the drain  opening was, I jumped off my horse and had to climb down an embankment about 6 feet into some thick brush.  There was Radio, one of Bobby's hounds, stuck in the pipe! The pipe was bent inward, crimped, about 3" with a sharp pointed edge, and this was preventing Radio from getting through. it .  I have no idea how the camera captured this, as I had to have had one hand on the radio, one hand pulling on the dog, so??? The camera was around my neck. There are  a few seconds of blackness, and then the camera must have flipped around and captured me pulling poor Radio out!

..."we know he's in there,!" ..hounds have got their fox inside the drain pipe and he's about to bolt out the other end. 

Hounds ran this fox for almost an hour before denning him in an earth near the old farmstead where we put one in last week here.  All but three hounds were gathered, and we spent the next hour trying to locate them. Farting around, they were.  Finally, we decided the best thing to do would be to make another draw, get another fox, and have those 3 outlaws hark to the pack. Well,  Diana must have been  with us, as not 2 minutes after hounds were put back in covert, they jumped another fox. This one ran no more than 10 minutes before going to ground., But the plan worked! All hounds were accounted for this time!!   Larry's hounds had only been out once or twice this season, and he never turned back out. By the time we got all hounds loaded it was almost 11am.

After I pulled Radio out, I hopped back on the horse and took off to try to catch up with the pack.. They were swinging right towards the dirt road I had left earlier. While galloping down that road,, my radio popped out of its case ( didnt know it, of course).  Later, after realizing it was gone, I thought perhaps I had forgotten to pick it up off the ground after i pulled the hound out. When the hunt was over, I went back to look for it and took some pics of the drain pipe that show the bent edge. Someone else found the radio on the road....

that crimp in the pipe had a sharp edge facing inward, which is why the hound didnt want to come out. I was afraid to pull him at first, thinking he might slice his side up . But once he cleared his shoulders, I knew I'd be able to pull him out



The drain pipe runs under this path separating the ditch, off to the right, and the woods on the left.

 

the end of the drain pipe that empties into the ditch. It was quite a feat for hounds to get into it, actually,as there is alot of air underneath it!