Too good to be true!

On a good note, Jessie is doing quite well. She seems strong and is getting stronger. For the last two days she has been making only one and a half circles to enable her to climb the 150 feet for the lure. They are pretty small circles as well. She is building muscle. She is also quite nice this year as well. Enough so I had Karen check her band number to make sure it was the same bird. She appears plenty strong so I programmed the Drone to take the lure to 200 feet the next time she flies. It should go pretty fast over the next week or so.

We took Hope on the 12th to 12 mile ranch, and she caught the first Jack that jumped, and I posted that flight. We got back home earlier than usual with her early kill, and had time to fly Jessie on the drone. I finished updating the Blog and was looking at the computer. The dogs were outside. Josie suddenly started barking in the front yard. I looked and Josie was barking at a full grown "Dog" Coyote just a few feet outside the yard. He was watching her while I slipped the barrel of the .17 out of a bedroom window.

I still had time to skin him out and get him started drying. I am a bit confused by his actions. All the local Coyotes give this place a wide berth, or die. This guy was at least a couple of years old. His teeth had a bit more than 3/16 inch worn off them. Of course there was a cold front coming in, but still I was surprised that he ignored obvious habitation. Not normal for Coyotes, they are generally much too smart for that. He also had a lot of cockle burrs in his neck fur. We really don't have any close to the house. Perhaps he came from the ranch next door, they haven't bothered the Coyotes for at least two years in the hopes that they would trim down the rabbit population. Well that has happened in spades, not all the credit can go to the Coyotes however.

Friday the 13th:
Today was supposed to be a quiet day. A day of rest.

Well I rested all right, and spent a lot of time in the Hot tub and Sauna. We didn't get a lot of snow, just enough to get the grasses all wet and frozen. The birds got to go in the shop for the night for the first time  since April.

Sat 14th
Hope was ready to hunt, so we again went to 12 mile, and stopped at the last place that she killed a Jack. I started walking in the still wet weeds, and walked, and walked and never jumped a rabbit. I walked the Sage up the canyon for more than a mile without ever seeing a rabbit. I eventually put Hope in the car and turned out the dogs. They went another good chunk of country without them ever starting a rabbit either.

By that time my waterproof shoes were not water proof any more, and my butt was dragging.

We went back to the ranch and met Richard coming back up the road. We talked for a bit and then I decided to try along the ranch road down to the Whitehorse rd. I did jump three Jacks there and on the last one, Hope grabbed it just in front of Karen and the car. The Jack however strained Hope off by squirting through a big dense Sage. Hair was flying all over, but Hope was left on the wrong side of the bush.

I put her in the Hood and we came back home. After a couple of hours rest, a change of boots, and several aspirins, I picked up Hope again and went over to the ranch next door, where we tried it again.   I walked another large tract of Sage in a futile effort to make a catch. The poor thing did her best each flight, but it was just not to be. We weren't getting very many slips and she was getting desperate. She was looking down holes, flying to likely bushes peering into every nook and crevice she could find. I eventually wore out again, and we went home empty handed.

Richard called in the evening and was telling me about a spot further up the canyon.

Sunday 15th
 I decided to try again in the hopes that the snow had every thing holed up and today would be better. Well it wasn't. I put in enough effort to find that while the rabbits might be moving through the area, they were not living there. We ran the dogs for quite a way back down the Canyon to see if they could find any pockets of Jacks. I finally decided to go back to where we killed on the 12th and walk it in a different direction. We did find a few Jacks, but they were all smarter than we were, so I headed back towards the road and walked the ridge back towards the White horse Rd. I even tried the field where she had grabbed the one that got away, hoping that I could find him and hoping that he would be sore enough to be handicapped, but he had found a better hiding place as we did not find him or any other ones either.

I gave up and fed Hope for the first time in two years on a day that she didn't catch any thing. I need a rest day.