12 1/2 couple today. 47F on the way to the 8am meet, 53F on the way back at 12:30. Winds variable, but out of the SE, supposedly.( I would argue that fact with weatherman). Foggy, overcast, with rain in the forecast ( but it never materialized).
It was a less than perfect start-two foxes found during the first couple of hours , but both went to ground within giving the pack a good run. Hounds seemed to have trouble finding and staying with scent. By 9:45, I was beginning to think that the day would be a bust. UNTIL....
Hounds jumped fox # 3 right before 10am. What a co-operative pilot he proved to be! He made several large swings around the Buzzard Swamp, and three times he ran the north edge of it down to where Bobby and I were positioned. He was not shy, and showed himself often. His image on this video makes up for not being able to capture any of the foxes with my helmet cam at Wye Island on Friday. (but I love the hound work on that video!)
We treated Twister for Lyme's last summer and now he seems like a different dog. He and Sara have taken to palling around together, and apparently , he brings out the best in her! If you havent noticed in the vids, oftentimes of late it is Twister and Sara out in front. And so it was when our fox made a return run to the Buzzard Swamp after a change in pattern following his third trip along its' edge in my view. He had busted out of the west side of the covert and made a loop behind the Drummond Girls place before running the powerline cutover and across another fallow cornfield, heading back to the Buzzard Swamp. Bobby and I got to them as they were crossing the field, but not in time to stop those front-runners. Tommy pulled up behind us, and although I was inclined to let the pack roll on and attempt to catch up with Twister and Sara ( who had a sizeable lead) , Tommy , needing to be somewhere in the near future, opted for breaking them. When I saw how hot the hounds were, and how easy it was to break them, I quickly agreed. We got them loaded , caught up with that front couple, and were done at 11:50.
The video shows our fox as he makes at least two rounds past me. The second time he ducks into the woods after running the edge, hounds over- run it badly- but they did recover the line without losing too much ground. Which is evident when Charles makes his third round past us: the pack is only seconds behind him. He pulls a fast move this time by running the edge, then turning east to run across the field in front of us. But he only goes half way. He then disappears briefly from our view as he runs along a ditch bottom, to reappear to us as he makes his way back to the exact same spot where he had entered the woods the previous time around. It was awesome ( I hate using that word, but it truly applies here) to watch the hounds solve the puzzle, unaided by any human interference. (We try not to help them if at all possible and leave the hounds to do their job). Its all on there. ( the video) :-)
There is alot of video to sift through - so Ill update this blog entry later to include some more.
After our second fox went to ground, Marney ended up in my hound truck. I snapped these two shots of Bobby holding her as we get ready to let her hark to the pack as they run fox #3. I think its great how Marney and Bobby are both intently following the hounds. They were running in the covert about 150 yards away, and I wanted to be certain that she would make them, so I made Bobby hold onto her for a few seconds. Her stern was beating so hard it almost knocked Bobby over!
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