February1 hunt

14couple, including our friend from New Jersey's hounds.  A showery  but warm morning ( 52 F) at the start.  I snapped this picture of a rare morning rainbow at 7:15am while driving  west to the meet.  We had a bit of rain for the first hour of the hunt, then it cleared out, the sun came out and the temps warmed quickly to the low 60's before the day concluded.

Our first two foxes each ran for a short hour, and the hounds worked well ( see video for a great bit of houndwork as they recover a line on fox # 2.   A truck follower had viewed a fox gone away from the covert we were drawing.   I positioned Rap in the field adjacent to the covert,  close to where  Olin said the fox had crossed. The hounds failed to find in the woods, but as they emerged onto the edge some hounds opened and began to trail in another direction, 90 degrees from where the viewed fox ran. There had been two foxes, and our hounds settled on  the one not seen.  The first part of the video picks up right after the find.

 Hounds were loaded after they denned this fox  and driven about a mile away for another cast .  I arrived at the covert to find  hounds trailing a fox , but not doing much.  When the pack broke covert and trailed across a wheat field headed towards a barn where we know foxes like to den in a drain pipe, it was quickly decided to break them .  This fox was most likely ensconced deep within  that pipe...

Now it was after 11am. . Jeff  had driven 3 hours to join us, and  all of us   wanted  MORE.  Another draw was made at yet another covert about a mile further north.  This time, hounds quickly  found a fox that wanted to run. For the next 55 minutes  this red gave chase all over the countryside,  leaving Delaware and running west over the open for a good 1/2 mile into Maryland.  There, Charles continued to cover an unusual amount of territory. So much so, that I would have thought it might be a coyote except for the fact that Tommy viewed him away. And there were NO checks -this was no swapping of foxes today!  At 12:15, Charles ran a paved road for about 100 yards, thereby  causing the pack to finally  check for about 2 minutes. They recovered the line and ran a woods briefly to emerge onto a dirt road  to the west.  Here their pilot also ran the road, causing another check.  Bobby and I were the first to arrive to find  all of the hounds in the middle of the road.   When it appeared as if this fox may have continued  his journey further west into country we dont hunt, we opted to load them .We had one truck, yet  managed to load all but about 6 hounds. The other men arrived minutes later to finish thejob. All  hounds had been on! It was a quick end to a very fast chase. ...And we knew   that Jeff would be going home to New Jersey with some very tired hounds. And I was going home to Delaware with a very tired horse!