So, I've been remiss with my posts for the past 4 hunts

Noses to the ground,  butts up!!

Reilly , Marney is right behind her-brown head hound with black dot on side

... and now they all run together in my mind, lol. I have been spending as much time as possible working with the new hoss, as my goal is to get him out with hounds for his first time this weekend. ( Weather permitting).

However!! Today we hunted some country outside of American Corners, MD. The guys have not  been hunting here for 8 years.  The last time they did,  one of the hunters dropped dead  (heart attack) right  in one of the  coverts.

Anyway, the country is mostly wide open wheat fields, with  good-sized coverts and narrower hedgerows and thickets surrounding them.  We walked 10 couple across 200 yards of wheat into the first woods at 8am, and at 8:20 they opened on their first red.  He ran for over an hour, but stayed to the woods almost the entire time.  When the fox came out to a road and then doubled back into the woods, we broke the hounds. With all of that open wheat, we wanted to find a fox that would run it!

Just as hounds were being gathered, a car-follower viewed another fox in a fallow field  about a mile away. Hounds were brought to the view and the video picks up there.  This fox ran a large covert for quite a while, but he would cut the corners of the fields enough that we got some views of him.  Twice, he came perilously close to a point  of the woods that is less than a few hundred yards from a highway. As I watched that corner diligently ( NO WAY did we want hounds getting to that highway), that sneaky fox broke covert and crossed behind me, running the open for over a mile. We had some scary moments when it appeared as if he might, indeed, make a turn towards the highway.  He must have gotten turned by traffic because he made a swing through a small covert behind a house next to the road and then broke covert on the south side of same to begin his run over the wheat (shown in the video).  He was headed back to the covert where he had been roused.   Tommy, Jim and Olin viewed the fox as he entered a hedgerow and then broke covert across another fallow field headed towards his "home"  woods. But half way across the field, the fox stopped and did a U-turn.( No comment-I didnt see it, but we think we know what happened). Charles was last viewed back into the hedgerow. By now, Bobby and I were watching one side of that narrow strip,with all of the others watching the other side.  No fox appeared. Hounds emerged into the fallow field, over ran where the fox U-turned, and then checked.  Since we didnt know where the fox went, and hounds had now been running for over 2 1/2 hours, a quick decision was made to pick them up while all were on.  It was enough - the wind was getting stronger.  No need to push our luck . Coming back to this  country next week, when hopefully, the wind wont be so bad.