Hounds hunted 5 out of the last 6 days- today was short and sweet

The sky to the north of High Stump Rd at 7:15am

...and the sky to the south of High Stump Rd  at 7:15 am

And the demarcation of the two, directly over top of High Stump Rd!

  12 couple went out again this morning, and our plan was to let them run for about an hour.   After this past week they are hard and lean, but definitely in need of a couple of days off. They certainly didnt need to run for very long today. When I let my  bitches out of the exercise pen to load into the horse trailer, Marney,Marilyn and Sara jumped right in.  Lark, on the other hand,  made a bee line right back to the kennel,lol! But she wasnt sore, so I loaded her, too. (I think she's not real fond of travelling in the horse trailer).

Bobby and Tommy  had to walk only 100 yards down a ditch  before Part time opened in the tall weeds.  It hadnt taken but a minute for the pack to hit the line of a very co-operative  red fox. It was 7:32am. During the ensuing 45 minutes, this red made two huge clock-wise circles around High Stump Rd.  We viewed the fox as he crossed the road going over AND coming back, during the first swing.  Charlie stayed nice and close to the road, which made it unecessary for me and Rap to  leave the blacktop.   When  the fox made his third trip  over High Stump, we all missed seeing where he crossed, and you will see how the hounds had trouble picking up the line. (Each time  the fox hit the road , he ran it down a  bit before ducking back into the woods). When you hear Tommy say."If he ran the road down,we'll  have a job this time", he means because no one viewed the fox cross over the road, we wont be able to help hounds recover the line if they check. As you will hear at the very end, it was Radio who hit it again. It was  now  about 8:15,  and after the completion of  these two complete circuits, our fox changed his course and ran straight away to the north.( He wasnt going to make it too easy for us.!)  When  Bobby and Tommy got in position on the next road,  they viewed two foxes break covert, both headed towards them( heading north). I viewed a  third fox  travelling SOUTH, running towards the same covcert ,as  Rap and I made our way around.

Definitely a good time to break the pack!  They were running the second fox that the guys had viewed, and everyone was in position to hold up the hounds when they hit Parker Road.  It was 8:39!!! Our chase couldnt have gone any better.  All on,  and all earning a very well-deserved rest for the next couple of days.

Hunting again on Thursday, after the cold front moves through. It was 62 degrees during our chase this morning, and the high today is forecast to be in the low 70's. Too warm!

I had the helmet cam on, and the battery died after about 5 seconds. So I ditched that, and the video here is done with me holding the Nikon.(You know, the one that doesnt focus worth sh*! half the time).  But the audio is good, and pretty funny at times. And there is some good, in focus video of the hounds running.

All I edited out of the video that I  *was* able to stop and take  was the really out of focus stuff, and the video is chronologically as the day unfolded. But once our fox headed north, Rap and I had to hustle and there was no time to mess with the camera anymore.