Hope has been slowly breaking in to her new digs. She is a bit difficult to get out of the mews for what ever reason. She wants to get her tidbit, and then go on back to her outside perch. While I had her in the "weathering area" flying loose she was keeping her weight down. I can only guess that the mews is a lot warmer than the open weathering enclosure, because she isn't losing as much weight over night. The Hangar blocked the prevailing wind, but there was still some coming around ends of the building. I am also sure that a 20 foot heating cord wrapped around half of her 2x4 perch, puts out more heat than just a foot warmer. We have had night of 11 degrees and she is still not sitting on the heat side of her perch.
Tuesday I was going up to Burns to help Connie with her fireplace, so I decided to do a quick hunt here at the house, or rather backyard. The plan was to give her a turn of the back field and then feed her whether she killed or not. I had a hard time getting her out of the mews, and then found that she weighed 1071- 2 ounces more than when I put her in there. I was due to go to Boise the next day and I didn't want to leave her four days without eating, so I perversevered.
After I weighed her I let her fly to the roof of the house while I went for her Tee perch. When I came back, I couldn't find her. Then I saw her :mantling" over something on the ground that looked a lot like a Rabbit.
A couple of days ago I found a big pile of hair in the back yard. Not sure if you know it or not, but a cat will sometimes pluck the hair off their victim, prior to starting to eat. I was sure then that I had a Bobcat working the yard.
I believe that the " assumed Cat " had caught and killed this Jack and was interrupted by me letting the dogs out for their morning whiz. The Jack was still limber and not frozen in the 8 degree weather. It was missing the entire head,ears and all, and down to the shoulders. I admitted defeat and gave Hope a token amount, and put her back in the mews.
Yesterday Brick found a young Badger that apparently had designs on my hive of Bees out in front of the Cat house. In case you are wondering, there is no way for a Badger to catch a Jack Rabbit other than trapping it in a hole. Prior to finding the Rabbit killed in the yard I had put out a trail cam to see if a Bobcat really was working the yard. In the morning I discovered that there was 184 pictures of Jack Rabbits on it. After the Rabbit dead in the yard, I only got four pictures on the cam and they were all of me.
So today it was the third day after her last meal, and again she was evasive. I did snag one of her jesses and when weighed found that she was still 1041 grams. She isn't having as difficult time keeping warm in the Mews as I was worried about. I was happy that I had made the right choice in putting her out. Hopefully we won't have any minus temps this year.
We went over to the other side of the ranch and seemed to be having a bit of a problem finding any rabbits. She did get two chases and though she tried hard, wasn't able to catch either one. She began hanging around where she last saw them and was able to wait them out and get another try at them.
I decided to try another area just over the hill that had been covered with Coyote traps. We met the trapper and he told me that he had pulled his traps, so we were clear to hunt since I had the dogs with me.
We hunted an area that had previously held quite a few rabbits, finding almost nothing. I noticed a ribbon that he had used to mark the trap location with and I was curious as to how Brick would check it out. Without warning Hope bailed off the tee perch and down on the Jack that the guy had been using as bait. CRAP! I had to give her a much bigger chunk of meat than I wanted, to get her to leave the Jack. I stuffed him in my bag just to get him out of sight.
The attraction for this area is what is called the "Pothole field". It is an area of artesian pools that bubble up all over this field. The ground is either alkali, or dust, and the vegetation in the rough is Greasewood.
Finally one jumped up from just a few yards away and Hope caught him in 30 yards. 5.2 miles today. Man I need that Hot tub!
No comments:
Post a Comment