When hunting Wye Island, it's imperative to check the tides. It IS an island, afterall, and when the tide is low, foxes LOVE to run the shoreline, staying out of view.(In most \places there is a very steep drop off down to the waters' edge, as you can see in the helmet cam video.) Low tide was to be at around 7:20am, with the high tide somewhere around noon. Ideally, we would have waited and started our hunt at around 9:30am, when the tide was well on its way back in. But the impending rain forced us to move the time up to 8am.
When I drove over the bridge leading to the Island at 7:45am, there was a fair amount of shoreline exposed.
Crap. At least the rare S/SW wind would push the tide in faster....
It was 52 degrees, and the wind was blowing at about 15-20 mph. (A rather pleasantly warm day on Wye Island ,compared to most! Last year, we hunted here with several inches of snow on the ground, and the small coves and inlets ringing the island were completely frozen over in places- a hazardous scenario when the fox runs over the ice and the hounds following him dont make it!)
Wye Island is a Maryland Wildlife Management Area of 2800 acres. Fox chasing is strictly limited here to only 12 days a year, and one must enter a lottery ( sic) with hopes of being assigned a day. Today was my day. Rain? Wear a raincoat. Sore horse? Vet says there's nothing wrong but some low heels, give him some banamine and ride the sucker - and find another farrier right after the holidays.
The other caveat: one is only allowed to bring 6 couple of hounds to hunt. And there is a charge of $5 per hound. So,today would set me back $60. I brought only 1 couple, Marilyn and Lark ( the other two bitches are just about ready to hunt after being in heat ). Tommy brought 2 couple:Twister, Jocko, Terri and ' The Skinny Bitch" ( really, that's what he calls her, lol!) Bobby brought Reno, Shamrock, Roscoe and Pearl. And Curtis brought Dawn and one other hound whose name escapes me at the moment...
Hounds were gathered and roaded to the Holly Tree covert,where two foxes broke covert at the same time at about 9:40 am.The pack settled on one and ran it for another long hour until they came to a loss on the disappearing shoreline of a small cove on the east side of the island . ( The first chase stayed to the west side of the island).
I was with them and watched as they tried in vain to recover the line for about 15 minutes. Either Charlie gave them the slip ( the tide was coming in, and the shoreline was quickly disappearing), OR, he went in somewhere along the bank of that small cove.) Regardless, by the time we gathered the hounds and walked them back out to the road, it was raining . And the wind was really starting to blow HARD.
At around 11am, as I was hacking back to the trailer parking area, the sky opened up and the rain really began to come down. We planned our hunt, and it went pretty much as we had hoped, except for the damn low tide.
Took video with the helmet cam and I find it to be pretty useless. Just a lot of the horses' head bobbing, wind noise, and not much else. The segment shown here was the best- and i was alot closer to the hounds across that cornfield than it appears. And the audio sucks, as far as being able to hear the pack in full cry. The handheld Nikon does much better- took a few seconds of the hounds with it for comparison.
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| Finally got a chance to photograph this quaint Methodist Church , located on the road t o Wye Island. Founded in 1807.(The Eastern Shore of Maryland was the birthplace of the Methodist Church in America). |
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