A co-operative fox on a very windy day

Looking east, over my barn at 7:00am. That is a fox weathervane silhouetted against the sky.

..and looking out my drive to the west, also at 7am.

We had 12 couple out again today - but not the same 12 couple as usual. Tommy is away, so his  4 couple are up in kennels until the first week of January.  Bobby is taking GOOD care of them -making sure they are getting plenty to eat so that they will be nice and FAT by the time  Tommy returns.  ;-)

I am estimating the number of hounds- I didnt get a confirmed  total, and I havent had time to count hounds in the video. It seemed to me to be   a few more than 12 cple. Whatever...

It was  33 degrees when we made the draw at 8:10am. The wind was out of the N/NW, already gusting 20mph. The wind advisory was for winds to be sustained at 25-35 mph. all day.

Three foxes were viewed during the draw, and the hounds settled on one ( thank goodness- no splits with the guests' hounds!) that decided to stay pretty close to home today. This fox stayed within one rather small area for the entire chase, making several circles around me .  I barely moved from one position for the duration of the chase ( about an hour and 20 minutes).   Only downside to that was that I was on the edge of the woods and in the wind. ( you can hear it on the video-wow, did it intensify as the morning progressed!) When the fox gained a sizable lead over the pack, we called them off the line.  It was close to 10am.

We relocated to another covert several ;miles away , and hounds were cast into the gravel pit behind Freddy's  farm.  Reno found a fox within 5 minutes of the cast, and the pack was in full cry headed down the branch towards the "party bridge'.  However, Reynard didn't  run the woods long before breaking covert and making a bee-line for a large earth in the middle of a fallow cornfield. The run didn't last more than 15 minutes!  Hounds were gathered and another draw was made , but by this time it was close to 11am and the wind was getting ridiculous.    When Bobby and  Freddy emerged at the party bridge after drawing the entire length of the branch without a strike, we all agreed it was time to load hounds.  The wind was blowing so hard it almost knocked me over.