Wednesday, Oct. 17 Hunt - All went well, thanks to Shirley



Marney in the lead!-look in the weeds on the right side

 ...Bobby and I wanted to hunt today. Howard and Larry couldnt join us. We needed at least one more person to attempt to hunt the  country, since the roads bordering it  can have a lot of fast moving commercial trucks flying along them  as contractors head to work. Shirley volunteered to lend us a hand, and once again: we planned our little hunt, and hunted our plan:

We walked our 6 couple into the tall weeds adjacent to the old Cy Haines barn site at 7:40am. Winds were calm, and the temp was about 49 degrees. Reno jumped the fox at 7:47, and  all hounds were on as this red headed south,  through the weeds and on into a nearby woods.  Bobby was left on foot while Shirley and I  headed to the perimeter roads in both trucks.   The fox ran behind a string of small bungalows on IronMine rd, then turned a bit east and came perilously close to Sand Hill Rd.  Luckily for us, he then made a swing west, away from any paved road and toward the stone lane that cuts through the middle of this state-owned parcel.  Bobby had made his way to that same stone lane and Shirley got to him and picked him up.  Meanwhile, I headed to Beagle Club rd to be downwind of the cry.

Bobby and Shirley viewed the fox cross the stone lane in front of them, with all hounds on.  They were headed away from me.  WAY away from me.  While I played catch-up, they viewed another fox leave the covert hounds were in and cross  C&R Center Rd.  The pack didnt come on that one, but continued on a run that took them back to the Haines homestead.  From there, they made a counter clockwise circle that put them close to where the other fox had left the woods and crossed the road.   There was a long check, and then some frantic barking by Pearl and  Roscoe. The other hounds kept running  to repeat this circle a second time.  When Bobby and Shirley walked the short distance from the road to the woods to investigate Pearls' unusual behavior, they stumbled upon a buck deer that was tangled up in vines. It was a very sick buck-probably had the blue-tongue  disease that has killed hundreds of deer here in the past 2 months.  Pearl was standing there, shaking and barking at it as it thrashed around trying to free itself.  By  this time , the rest of the hounds were running right towards this small piece of woods again. We decided to break them and get them away from the crazed buck, asap!  We broke them on the edge of a cutover cornfield only about a hundred feet away from where the buck was struggling.  I dont know what happened to the fox, I was just glad that we had had a good chase of 75 minutes' duration, with all hounds loaded by 9:10 am.  Bobby saw the buck free himself and stagger off wildly  into the woods.  

I'm not fond of this style hunting - nerve wracking without enough help.  But the hounds did great !
Here's some music-houndswere running in those far woods, about3/4mile away from me:

Hopefully, next week Shirley and I will be on horses and there will be enough guys on the roads.