Finally Got Out with The Dog

[bshadle 5]

Finally got a few hours away from the responsibilities of work and home and was able to get out this morning. Been hearing from a nearby farmer whose land I hunt that he’d been seeing a pair of fox in his fields, and asked me to take a look. Day dawned at 24 degrees F with a 10 mph wind to lower the chill even more, thought it might be a good morning to find something home.

 

Didn’t take us long to find this one. If this isn’t a fox den, then I don’t know what is.

 

 

Dot was anxious to check it out, but unfortunately no one was home

 

 

We found a few more holes that looked like they’d seen some recent activity, and then came across this one. It looked so appealing dug into the old root snarl that we had to check it out.

 

 

But this one was empty too.

 

 

Then we came across this one with a limestone front porch. Actually glad that it came up empty. Didn’t look forward to digging through or under that chunk of rock.

 

 

Dot was behaving well off lead until we ran into the one glitch of the day. We topped a slight rise in the field, and a road came into view about 600 yards out. A truck was heading down the road, and Dot decided to take off like a bat out of hell to catch it. Flat out sprint across a plowed field with me yelling at her to come the whole time. At the 300-yard point, she finally stopped and came back. Don’t know if she ran out of steam, realized she couldn’t catch the truck, or the “If you don’t get back here now you better just keep on going†tone in my voice finally hit her. Clipped her to the lead for the walk back to the truck.

 

We took a short drive to another field on the farm. Lot of good-looking prospects, but still no one home. Dot located some scent above ground and acted like a beagle trying to work out a confusing trail. It never went to ground, and I never found any tracks, but from the way she was working, I’d guess it was a stale rabbit trail.

 

It made it up to 50 degrees F before we called it quits for the day. At least the scenery was pretty.

 

[thurso jack 3]

unlucky mate, keep at it with that amount of holes about you are bound to bump into something soon!

[nelson 0]

You've got to hand it to them from over the sea,they do make a good post.Took me 2 hours to put a chuffing picture up

 

Well done shag.

[bshadle 5]

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a day in the field with the dogs whether it ends up with quarry or not, and a bad day hunting beats a good day at work. But...

 

I think I'd happily trade an easy time posting six pictures of nothing for a hard time posting one picture of game.