Oct 15- searching for game

I have spent three days looking at various parts of the Ranch next door trying to find a population of Jacks that I could hunt without having to drive to get to them. It can get a bit expensive here, with the scarcity of gas stations locally. Considering I would burn two gallons just coming home from filling up.  Not complaining you understand, just explaining. Anyway, it is obvious that I am going to have to travel to find game in populations high enough to make it worth the effort. I have also developed a bone spur on my right foot, so the higher the population of Rabbits, the less walking that I have to suffer through.

I made some calls this morning to re-establish contact with the Ranches that I have hunted on in the past, and loaded Yogi in the car to see what is actually there. I also put my Varmint calling gear in to see what the Coyote populations are where I want to hunt.

Yogi is down to 1045 grams, and seems to be ready enough to hunt. There is a patch of Lava owned by two different Ranches, that has had good populations in the past. I checked the first side and found that the rancher had put a very large bunch of Cows on it, so decided to go to the other side which is much more extensive.

We began jumping Rabbits within 80 yards of the car. Yogi acted as though she was going to catch one, but only if it made a serious mistake. Well Jacks do not voluntarily"slip the mortal coils of this life" quite that easily. In fact the darn things are downright hard to catch. After an extensive hike around several hundred acres of habitat, that seemed to hold a good number of Jack Rabbits, it became quite plain that Yogi was looking more for volunteers than victims.

Perhaps she thought that they came prepackaged. She showed a lot of interest in what this box might hold.

She didn't get all that much food, compared to the exercise that she got trying to see if anyone wanted to surrender. I will check her again Saturday to see if her enthusiasm for surviving has kicked in enough to try just a bit harder.

Once she was loaded I drove further out the ridge line to an area that should hold Coyotes, and set up my calling gear.

The Ranchers in this area hire a Helicopter each year to gun the Coyotes. They kill large number of them as you might imagine. There was also something else going on with the Coyotes, and one theory that I have heard was that Parvo played a large part in the die off of Coyotes. I do know that they were scarce every where that I hunted last year. Where you used to hear Coyotes calling from several different directions, there is almost total silence.

I called from my setup for about 30 minutes and saw nothing at all. Confirming to me that there is nothing to stop the Rabbit populations from booming in the next year or two.