Winding down

 Puddy

Yogi

It seems a bit early, but this evening I put the Harris' in their winter quarters after their hunt. Things have been getting a lot tougher, and weather and wind are, more often than I would like, keeping us from hunting. It was showing 30 degrees on the truck thermometer, and Puddy was shivering while we were out.

I went to Arock today out of desperation, hoping that I could find enough rabbits that they could make a kill or two. Karen is in to baking for Christmas, Tami is building fence and school for the kids, so it was just me and the birds. It is a bit of a problem, as one of them has to follow along, and that is generally left to Yogi to do so. She tends to go hunting in the direction that she thinks best, which is not always where I want to go.

 We found a few Jacks, and Puddy even managed to catch one after a couple of hours and a lot of walking. It, however as was the last one they caught, not all that healthy. There is some kind of ?"pus pocket"? that some of the older ones have under their skin. They seem to have some kind of larva encased in it that gives me the creeps. The last one that they caught had what appeared to be some kind of eggs in the abdomen. I threw most of it away as I did every thing but the legs on this one.
The other day I found a Bunny in the horse corral that could not get to its feet and was bleeding from the nose and mouth. There was no obvious signs of injury to him. I also threw his body where none of my animals could get to it.  There is little reason to kill them if I cannot make use of their flesh. The survivors will soon be breeding. Perhaps we will have more next year. Things are tough enough as it is without us contributing to their reduction.

It has been a good year, and I have had a lot of fun, but it is time to put the Harris Hawks up. I will hunt Jessie a few more times until the breeder comes to get her.

Jessie

The weather is in between storms for a bit, so Karen and I took Jessie out to hunt. Not sure how long the break will last, so there was some urgency. We just finished two days of high winds, 49 MPH was the highest gusts.

We turned Jessie loose and watched her for hints on where the Ducks were holding. When she settled on an area of the Creek, we began moving in to see what she had.

 As we got close, Betsy again went on point, but before we could get any where close to the Creek, a Gadwall flushed with no apparent provocation. Jessie slammed him into the water, which was futile, and continued to fly. She was no longer very high, so our chances were reduced. We waited for her to get back up and into position, when some more Ducks again got up off the ditch. She again knocked another one into the Creek.

She then landed for a bit, and I attempted to get into a spot that I thought might hold some more Ducks. After she began flying again, we walked up the creek, but the creek was empty. Apparently the storms blew the resident Ducks out of the area. There did not seem to be very many at all on the Creek.

Oh well, she at least got to fly for a bit. When we got back home, I decided to give her a chance to take a bath. It was definitely too cold for her to bathe outside, so I put her on Puddy's perch and take the bath inside. I turned the heater on to dry her out when she finished.

You should have seen her eyes light up when I brought in her bath pan. She wasted no time getting in as soon as I poured the water.

Mystery solved

Well here is the answer to my mystery of Friday. I was pretty sure that a Bob Cat was responsible for the Jack Rabbit in the hot wire. However I didn't think that he would be back for a week or so. Especially after he got his nose burned with the wire.

It snowed a bit this evening. I had turned to dogs out to pee around 9 PM, and Josie ran out the door and as soon as she hit the yard she started barking as though she had seen something close. I got the spot light thinking that I would be seeing Deer, but there was nothing. I later found this cats tracks right outside the door. I think Josie almost ran right into him.

Karen and I settled down to watch the final day of the NFR. For some reason I decided to see if the Deer had come up to the stack. I went to the back bedroom and tried to shine the light on the hay. The reflection of the windows made it tough to see clearly, but I finally saw an animal on the top of the Alfalfa bale. It looked like a Cat, but I couldn't tell for sure. I got Karen and my rifle. We went outside and I had her shine the light on the hay stack. It didn't take long to decide that this was not one of our outside Kittys.

It appears to me that he caught another Rabbit as it went up to eat some of the Alfalfa. There was hair and a bit of blood under the hot wire, as well as "scuffle" marks.
However I couldn't see any indication that he was able to keep or eat the rabbit.

The picture above shows where the cat had lain long enough to melt the snow. I think he grabbed a Rabbit and got into the hot wire again, only this time he ended up inside the enclosure. I also think that every time he tried to get out, he got zapped. Either that or he decided to get comfortable while he was waiting for a Rabbit to come into range.

They are lovely creatures, but they don't belong in my yard. We have been pretty lucky in that we have only lost some Pigeons to them. It could have been a lot worse.

He is actually pretty heavy. Karen was trying to take a picture of him out by the hay stack. Of course she couldn't see through the view finder, and I am trying to hold him up long enough for the camera to focus, I am starting to grunt by the time the picture finally snapped.

Daylight has come, so I went out to work out the way that events unfolded prior to my interruption.


Here is where the Cat caught the Jack Rabbit.

He killed it, and then brought it under the wire, coming towards the bottom of the picture. You can see some blood spots just under the wire.

He brought it around the loading chute and ate it at the beginning of the chute.

After he finished, he buried the guts and a few other remains behind the wall.

The part that I find interesting is that after killing and eating one Jack, He walked back through the hot wire to take a nap on the hay stack, perhaps waiting for desert? Who knows? I am surprised at how brazen these cats are.

I did not blog about it, but this is the second encounter with Bob Cats this fall. I first noticed that we had a Cat working the house in June. I kept finding the tracks around the house, and other than some spots of Rabbit hair left from one of her kills. Some in the shadow of the house itself. Then we started finding some of our Pigeons in the kill spots. Then finally as we were sitting in the house, me reading, and Karen on the computer, one of the house cats sitting in the window. A loud thump against the glass brought me and a spot light outside to see what was going on. I found a large Bob Cat standing under the window, looking at me from about 8 feet away. I called Karen to come see, and the Cat moved back to about 12 feet and was standing there watching us. Of course by that time I could see that this wasn't going to turn out very well for us and our critters.

This one was a female. I had a hard time believing that she would try to kill our house Cat while we were right there. The TV was on, but she ignored all that and the Dogs on their trips outside. We will see if things will calm down a bit now, and since Jessie is fat, and the Harris Hawks will not hunt in the snow, I guess I will take a couple of sleeping pills ( Betsy and Frank ) and wait for better weather.

Jessie's turn

The weather is getting down there and the wind is whipping. Jessie however wanted to fly, and was at her perfect weight of 870 grams. She was begging me from the time that I put her out this morning, to go hunting. Finally at 1:30 PM I decided that I was going to have to keep my word and take her out to see what we could do.

Tami was in the middle of shipping Cows, so it was just Karen and the dogs. We drove up as close as we could get, and I decided to see if I could locate a bunch of Ducks in the hope that we could bracket them and get a good flush for a change. I walked down to the Creek and found what I thought might be a few Ducks floating on one of the curves of the Creek. I went back to the truck and as I did, the Duck that I saw, got up and flew up the ditch a ways. I decided that we would just turn Jessie loose and let her figure out where the Ducks were.

I turned her loose and she settled on an area of the creek that was about a hundred yards or more up the creek from the spot that I had intended to rush. She did not leave that area, so Karen and I started up the ditch to get in position to rush the area that she was circling over. I finally left Karen at the lower end of her circles, and I went about 50 yards further up the Creek. As I was hurrying up the creek, I noticed that Betsy had gone on point towards the Creek. I knew then that she was smelling the Ducks. This is the first time that I could say that she was actually pointing  Ducks. I decided that she had a much better chance to know where they were than I, so I praised her and told her to find them. She moved closer to the creek and actually a bit behind where I had intended to hit the creek.  I told her to get them up. She flash pointed again, so I pushed her to flush. She hit the ditch right in the middle of a large bunch of Mallards and got them off the water.

Jessie flashed down from my left and leveled out to slash through the flock. I could not see what happened as she was lower than the bushes that I was trying to see through. She never came up, so I assumed that she had caught one, but the question was where, since the creek curled around again, leaving a small point to my right.

When I got around the point that I was on, I could see her fighting a Duck on the next little point. The dogs and I jumped into the Creek and started wading across. Josie had some trouble getting out of the water, so I gave her a boost and scrambled up the bank myself to go help Jessie.  The point was only about 10 feet wide, and they had fought almost all the was across it. Only the fact that Jessie had both a piece of Greasewood and the Ducks neck in one of her feet, Kept them from rolling into the water.

I helped her kill the Drake, patted and praised the dogs for their exceptional help, and settled back to wait for her to get around all the Duck that she could manage. Karen and Betsy went back to the truck to get out of the wind, leaving Josie, Jess and I out in the wind. This Duck is still one of the locals. There was little fat on the Duck, so I knew that it had not come down through the Corn fields of the North. Jessie peeled all the fat that she could get off it, only eating the meat to get to the fat.

 It is a bit surprising to see dogs that have to be forced into a warm swimming pool, willingly jump into this cold creek and swim across without a thought.

It was very nice to actually catch something again. It is tough to do on a regular basis on ditches and Creeks. No matter that the Dogs and I hit the Ducks head on, they still flew right up the Creek. If she had slashed the Duck instead of just grabbing it, we would have gone home empty handed again. If she had not grabbed some Greasewood inadvertently, she would have lost it in the Creek again.

It is true that Jessie is a bit of a handful, but it is also true that she is a bird of a lifetime. They do not come with this much drive and desire very often. I do not know if I will ever again have a Falcon with  half of the ability that this girl has. It is time to give her a chance however.

A new mystery, and catch up

Hunting has been pretty "hit and miss' lately. Mostly miss. The weather and busy hunting partners have combined to make things a bit uneventful. Of course  my own attitudes and laziness have played a large part as well.

I have been having some problems with the available rabbit populations, and a lot of our "non events" are due to not finding much to hunt. I made a 100 mile round trip Thursday to hunt one of my last years spots, only to arrive to a snow covered hunting area. As is usual, the Harris' did not perform well in that type of cover. I was also hunting by myself, and neither of the birds likes to share a Tee perch. So one rode and the other was always in the wrong place, so I got some exercise but nothing else to show for it. Karen was off with her gambling buddy and Tami was off to the Dentist.

As for Jessie, the game situation has been the same. For what ever reason the migration either has bypassed us so far, or not gotten really started. All of the storms have been from the South, with the jet stream going up through this area and coming down in the area of the central flyway. There are a few Mallards on the Creek, but that has been a bust so far. They always fly up and down the creek, and the twists and turns of Crooked Creek offer way too many ways to escape. Tami, Grace and I took her to the lake just before dark Wed. and she knocked a Mallard hen into the ground, but it managed to claw its way back into the water before she could get to it.

I have decided to put Jessie in a breeding project this winter. A friend has a Male Peregrine that is supposed to be a "natural" breeder. The hard part in breeding Falcons is to find a male that will copulate. Their problem is that they are much smaller than the female, and their sex drive is much less than their caution. Jessie has always been driven to nest. Her third year she got started laying eggs and didn't quit until she had laid 25 eggs. A normal clutch is 3-5. If she actually does make babies, I will leave her in the project and begin the process all over with one of her daughters. If not then I will bring her back home.

This morning when I went to feed, I found a dead Jack rabbit tangled in the hot wire around the hay stack.

At first I thought that it had died of shock. The wire is really hot, but I guess it isn't heart stopping hot, since there are no dead Deer, dogs and cats lying around it. Josie will not go around the Hay after sniffing the wire. Tiger, the cat will not get close to it either. In fact he was hiding under the car yowling this morning until I shut the fence off and it quit snapping on the dead rabbit.

Then I see a patch of hair about 8 feet in front the the wire where the rabbit was caught. The Jack had the wire wrapped around his hind leg and the wire was through its toes, so it was stuck, hard enough that it took two hands to unravel it.

 There was a scrape on one hind leg, and other than that just a puncture wound in one ear.

I skinned the Rabbit to see if I could find the cause of death.

As you can see the only signs of trauma on the body is a severed neck.

 I just checked the hide and the only cuts in the skin are puncture wounds, and the only injury is in the neck. So I think that I have another kitty cat hunting here. Not sure how its encounter with the hot wire will affect his willingness to hunt here however. I sure would have liked to have seen the encounter.

Tami and Reuben came over this evening and we went around the house to try to find something to hunt. We managed to find perhaps 6 Jacks, with most of them about 200 yards off on the start. Puddy managed to finally catch one of them on the other side of the fence along the runway. By the time we got through the fence it had managed to break away from her. Yogi was within 15 feet of assisting, but it might as well been a mile. We came away with no game to show for the effort.

Trying new areas

What seemed like a season of plenty has now deteriorated into a search for Rabbits. Yes I still have an embarrassing amount of Rabbits coming in to my hay stack each night. However since they apparently come from rather long distances, I cannot find more than one or two in several hours walking. There are apparently none of the young ones left. Between the Harris's, Eagles and Coyotes, not to mention a deceased Bob Cat. All of the young stupid ones have gone back to mother earth. In other words the hunting has turned to shit.

Jessie has been kept pretty low in weight, and her hunting has suffered because of it. I decided to fatten her up to see if things will improve. I took her out to the weathering area this morning and gave her a whole Pigeon. I fed her pretty heavily yesterday, but her weight was still a bit lower than I wanted, thus a Pigeon was what she needed.

Tami and I have been trying some new and more unproductive spots in the hopes that there were untouched havens of Jack Rabbits. So far they seem to be unpopulated havens instead. Oh well you never know until you try.

Today we decided to hunt the West boundary of the ranch. Some of it is in Greasewood, but it isn't that awful bad. The first place we tried held about 5 rabbits, but we could not get decent slips on many of them, and they came up empty on all of them. The girls were both giving it all they had, crashing into bushes both Greasewood and Sage with abandon, but not getting anything for their efforts. We had walked about a mile or more zig zagging back and forth trying to find where they were hiding, and came up empty for the most part. I finally decided to go back and get the car to try a spot over the hill that I had seen a fair number of Jacks earlier in the fall.

We loaded the birds into their boxes and drove to the new spot. We managed to jump a couple, but they seemed as scarce there as the other spot that we had hunted. We kept searching and walking, now in very sparse cover that was all Greasewood. I decided that it was getting dark so we headed back towards the car, that was now just a small speck off in the distance. About half way back Tami jumped a Jack right at her feet.  Both birds were after it. Puddy was behind, gaining ground with every wing beat. Yogi and I were in front, with the chase coming our way. Yogi of course took off as soon as the rabbit moved, so the Jack was in between two converging Harris Hawks. His only course was to dive into a large Greasewood Bush, and hope that they couldn't get to him. Unfortunately the bush was too thick for him to force his way through, so he was stuck. As soon as he dove into the bush, Puddy climbed to about 10 feet above it and dove down onto him from the top. She couldn't get through either, but she could force her feet down into the bush and grab him by the head. Yogi was a split second behind and also latched on to his head. All of this took only a split second, of course.

Tami got there before I did, and the situation was such that I felt that it was imperative to clear the bush from the birds so I didn't take a picture. Tami and I both broke and cleared the Greasewood from around the birds bodies. I assure you it was not something that was easy to do. They were really in there, and the stuff was all around their wings and between their bodies and wings as well as between their legs.  The stuff is really nasty with sharp spines all over and it is intertwined so that it is essentially one solid piece. We finally cleared them and I drug them out onto the pan.

Yogi was looking for her reward as soon as I managed to kill the Rabbit. Puddy always needs a lot more convincing and trouble getting her off. Grace and I cleaned and got their meals off the rabbit while they ate. Of course Puddy managed to choke down her reward and insist on taking the part that I was working on. We finally got her to eating the head and neck while I finished.

As we drove back the Sun finally dropped behind the Steens.

Odds and ends

The weather has been just shitty lately and really screwing with my hawking. Wind is a problem for the Harris Hawks. We really haven't had much if any rain, just cloudy and windy.

The Deer of course have been driving me crazy, and I had hoped with car horns and a bit of bird shot, that I might be able to preserve enough of my hay to feed the horse through the winter. Unfortunately these deer are willing to do just about anything for Alfalfa, and any peace that I got was as short lived as their memory. Most generally aversion therapy is effective, but not this time. Time to get serious even if it does cause me a lot more problems.

We started the other day on a "hot wire" fence around the hay stack. Of course I had to wire some post together to make them tall enough that the Deer wouldn't be able to jump over the fence.

We put posts in on all the corners and as you can see doubled them in front to make them tall enough. We stretched three hot wires and I ran a new wire from the "fencer" that I could remove when I needed to get in there to get some hay down for the horse. Karen had gone on to wash windows as I was hooking it up. I asked her if she knew where the fence tester might be, as I wasn't sure if it was working. The fencer is one of the "Hot" ones that will do several miles of fence. The little indicator showed that it was doing pretty good, but I wanted to make sure. About that time I hear a "ZOT" like a lightning strike, and hear a YOWL!  A yellow streak with a really big fuzzed up tail, cut across the yard complaining about every other step. Our new cat, Tiger, likes to help with the chores and he carries his tail over his back. "Never mind" I told Karen, its working pretty good. Josie managed to get into it today, and it really snapped her, she disappeared too, no doubt blaming me.

I set up the trail cam, and had a video of a pretty spooked deer, but no action on tape.  There were some pretty deep tracks in the gravel leaving the area, so I know he got into the fence. There was only one visiting last night, but the herd has been hanging around all day and I am hoping to see some action tonight. They will probably eat all my fruit trees as retribution.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tami brought Meg over the other day to fly her here at the house. The Kestrel over there is really crabby and attacks her if he gets a chance. She saw the dogs and began an alarm call. Of course it didn't take long for Jasper to come see what was going on. Tami had an extra Starling with her, so I pulled some feathers and tossed it. Jasper took off after it and put it in by the wood pile. I flushed it and he grabbed it on the other side of the fence. That left us free to fly Meg without interference.

She has caught on to the fact that bagged birds seem to come from the area where I am and is paying pretty close attention to me, so I had put a coffee can out with a string on it to get the bags away from me. We were walking in that direction, and when she started flying to the gate, I pulled the string. The poor Starling didn't have a chance, the flight went about two feet and she had him. Oh well!

The mouse population seems to be at an ebb. Jasper seems to be having a tough time finding enough food to suit him, so when he showed up as I was doing chores. I tossed a dead Starling out in the car yard, and went into the shop to watch. He wasted no time in flying down and grabbing the Starling and flying off with it. I kept the dogs in the house to give him enough time to eat what he wanted. When we went back out, I didn't see him any where.

Karen and I took the Harris Hawks over to Arock in the hope that the wind would be a bit less over there. We spent a couple of hours walking around in the wind and rain trying to catch a Rabbit. Puddy finally got her feet on one, but it drug her through enough bushes that she lost her hold on every thing except a couple feet full of fur. We finally gave up and went home. As we were driving in Jasper got up out of the bushes by the driveway carrying his Starling. He had eaten all he could hold, and then stashed it for later. I gave him another this morning.

Tami called me this morning to help her with a male Redtail that had crawled into her Starling trap in an attempt to eat some of the birds trapped in there. He was apparently having trouble feeding himself as well. He was pretty skinny, but about all we could do was wish him well and better hunting.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wind finally died a bit this evening, so I called Tami, and took the Harris' over there for a short hunt before it got dark. There were a couple of new areas that I wanted to try to see if they were holding any Jacks.

In total we jumped only five Jacks and Yogi caught one of them just before it got dark.

 It has been so long since we were able to do any hunting that all my "rewards and tidbits" had gone bad, so I gave Yogi a Pigeon wing. I was able to tear off a front leg for Puddy.

It took Yogi a bit before she decided that it might be food after all.

Hopefully the weather will straighten up a bit, and we can get out some more. It is just a waste to try to hunt the Harris' in the wind.

&*%$#*&@ Deer!

This is apparently the year of the Deer. They are a total nuisance. I guess its karma, but it still isn't any easier to swallow.

It all started with some poor trucker sucker who apparently did not know how to secure a load of hay. He lost six of the really large bales of Alfalfa off the truck along the Hwy just below Crooked creek on Hwy 95. Four of the bales were broken open, but two of them were still intact. It was obvious that he either did not know or accepted the loss and just kept going. There was no way that he was going to be able to recover them. These bales weigh approximately 1200 or more pounds apiece.

Well Ezra, our horse, would enjoy some of the high quality hay, so I went home, picked up our "car hauler" trailer, loaded my quad on to the front, facing backwards and chained it down. Karen and I drove down there, and backed up to one of the bales. I took the ramps and set them in front of the bale and winched it on the trailer. After unloading it, we went back and pulled the other one on as well, taking them back to the house. The other four broken bales were picked up by some one with a horse trailer, so nothing was wasted.

I am not sure if the increase in Deer here at the house is due to the exodus of the Deer that used to live in the area burned by the "Long Draw Fire", or if it is just due to the fact that the ranchers have pulled all their cattle out of the burned areas and stuck them on the home ranches. I do know that the cows on the ranch surrounding me have grazed the ground to almost nothing. The ranch surrounding me ? sells tags for trophy Deer, and have quite a herd that they cultivate, or take advantage of. They have some really nice bucks on their place and they do not shoot the little ones, just the monsters.

In any case, whether it is karma or the lack of food, but those two bales of Alfalfa have called in more Deer than I have ever seen. They are not skinny either, they are butterballs, and they are afraid of nothing.

I knew that there was a "four point" (Western count) and a bunch of does using the hay, and being curious I put a trail cam on the stack to see what was using it. What I found was that they were feeding off of it almost all night. They were feeding off of it in two hour segments, with a break in between of an hour or two, then back again. All night long.  Well that was too much. I had thought to just leave them alone, but they were breaking the bales apart and scattering them all around, plus the number kept growing. Something had to be done.

Well I tried yelling at them, they just waited until I went back in the house and went back to what they were doing before. Next step was bird shot ( #9 ) in the shotgun. The damn things would just stand there or run off 50 yards or so and stop to watch.  Well that was a disappointment, so I had some M 80's that were about 15 years old, and I figured that I could light them and shoot them among them with a sling shot. That didn't scare them either. I figured that I just needed to keep it up and they would soon see how scary and fierce I was, but they still treat me with contempt.

I was racking my usually fertile and sneaky brain for a solution to the problem, and think I may be on the right track for most of them.

I took the drive way alarm and stuck it on the hay stack to tell me when they are there. I also parked the car by the stack. Now when the alarm goes off I hit the "panic button " on the car keys.

https://vimeo.com/54645763    password - owyheeflyer

The first night I started at 7 PM and continued off and on until we went to bed. I took the receiver for the alarm into the bedroom and put the keys on my night table. I was woken up around 14 times that night. I was pretty grumpy the next day, but felt better. The large deer have left us and now I just have a few young ones to convince.

There is a young buck that I have run out of here three times so far tonight. Not sure what I am going to do. This seems to be working better than anything that I have tried so far, but poor ole Ezra hasn't had a decent nights sleep since this started. He hates car horns and spot lights.

Odds and ends

Today was cold and foggy at least until about 2 PM. We loaded Jessie up for another attempt at Ducks on ditches at the ranch. Upon our arrival, I gave Jessie to Karen while I checked the little pond. Unfortunately it is almost frozen over and there were no Ducks at all.

We went to the other side of the field to check the creek thinking to find Ducks there. Nothing there either, so we went on up the ditch, finally finding a bunch of Mallards in the next field. I positioned Karen and began walking up the ditch in an attempt to bracket them.  When I felt that I had enough room, I struck Jessie's hood and stuck her up in the air. All the horses in the field came rumbling down to see what I was doing. Jessie paid no attention until they started to surround us. That was too much and off she went and so did all the horses.

She began to get some altitude, and I began to edge my way to the creek. Apparently the horses spooked a Jack Rabbit, who in turn spooked the Ducks before any one was ready. Of course Jessie was out of position, and I was too far from the ditch to turn them out into the field, so once again the whole thing went down the tubes.

I started trudging up the creek, and Jessie followed along, but not really high enough to do any good. The Ducks would flush up the ditch, always when she was out of position and she would force them down into the creek again. Finally she ran out of steam and sat down on the ground in front of me. I attempted to walk around her thinking that I would let her rest and perhaps get into a better position to flush when she again came overhead. It was a good plan, just not one that Jessie wanted to follow. She got into the air again and began flying at me, trying to get me to throw the lure. I refused so after three or four fly by's, landed on my shoulder. I put my fist up, but there was nothing on it, so she flew on again and resumed flying by me. She again landed on my shoulder, so I gave up and put a Starling in my fist and she jumped on the fist to eat. Perhaps tomorrow we can get the flush right for a change.

All this walking took a lot longer than I had allowed, so when we got back to the house it was after four PM. Darkness is complete by 5:15 PM so we were on a bit tighter schedule than I wanted. We decided to fly here at the house to see if we could catch one of the ones who are trimming my lawn to nothingness. We could stand to lose some, as the grass is shorter than the rabbit turds.

We turned the girls loose after securing the Chickens for the night. They took a perch on the gate posts at the edge of the yard. We were walking towards them, when Yogi took off, sailing over the garden. She did a wing over and grabbed a Jack, but it pulled away from her. It was not so lucky with Puddy however and the first rabbit had died and we weren't out of the yard.

 She had caught it behind the Grape arbor, and between the two of them it was dead before I even got there.

I pulled them out into the open and gave them a chunk of rabbit to eat as a reward. We hunted for a bit more on the flat behind the house, but other than pulling some hair out of a slow one, we didn't have time enough to catch another one.

I have been having some trouble, make that a lot of trouble with Deer coming in and eating my hay.

 I am not sure how many there are, but they are making a mess. I have tried shooting them with bird shot, but they refuse to take no for an answer. I had just about resigned myself to leaving them alone. I decided last night to put a trail cam out there to get some idea of how many there were. What I didn't know was that they spent most of the night eating as much Alfalfa as they could. They first showed up at 9 PM. At 12 AM I went out and scared them off. They came back at 2:40 and stayed until 3:30,back again at 5:48 and stayed until 7:30.

I have been racking my brain all night and day as to how to take care of the problem. Unfortunately I don't have enough freezers or people that can eat that much venison, so I needed to think of something else. Luckily the Moon is full so that I can by using bino's see if they are at the stack.

I doubt if its going to do much good, but so far the only thing that I can come up with is to try to make it as unpleasant as I can. I took the Driveway alarm and stuck it on the hay stack along with the trail cam, so that I can tell without peering out of the windows if they are there. I also parked the car by the stack.

The alarm just went off while I was typing this blog, so Karen and I went into the back bedroom and I checked with the bino's. Sure enough the Deer were there. I gave Karen the glasses so that she could see, and then I hit the "panic button" on the car. Lights flashing, horn honking, deer peeing down both legs. We will see who gives up first.

A little sunset for you.

Ditches and poor choices- again.

Today was Jessie's turn again, and after we had flown Tami's little Kestrel, Meg, I took Jessie out of the car and suited her up. We had noticed some Ducks in the ditch behind Tami's house. Dave had been feeding the Cows in the far field, and we waited for him and the dogs to clear. I watched to see if the Ducks flushed when he crossed the creek, but they did not. I had Karen and Reuben to help me flush, so I turned Jessie loose and let her get some altitude.

She is in the upper left corner of the above picture. We let her get a bit more altitude, and then ran at an empty ditch. The fact that my curses were not audible, didn't mean that they weren't there. I started down the creek as fast as my old legs would carry me. I finally did flush a Teal that told me by its anxious dive into the Tules again that Jessie was still with me more or less.

After I had gotten across the fence and about a 1/4 mile down the ditch I hit some Mallards, but they too decided that the ditch was a lot safer than the sky. I would flush, they would fly down the twisting creek and splash in before she could get to them. She will (almost without exception) not hit a Mallard at speed, but she will bind with one and fight it on the ground. Finally after what I figured was about 3/4 of a mile, grabbed a hen Mallard, but apparently lost it when they crashed into the Greasewood. By this time both our tongues was hanging out and she sat down in a Greasewood bush. I had dressed way too well and was wringing wet, so I gratefully tossed her the lure. I had done my job, even though it was an inadequate one. I had produced Ducks. She had done the best she could and stuck with me for more than 20 minutes. No one wins every time, not even Jessie.

JASPER

Jasper is still with us, but things are getting a bit tougher. I noticed him the other day and he was busy trying to get something to eat, and not getting much, at least that was my guess. I went out to lock up the Chickens for the night and when I opened the door to give them some food, there was Jasper inside the Chicken house. ( You may remember that the Chicken house was one of the main suppliers of Sparrow meat for him when we were hunting him. It is no surprise that if he felt it necessary to switch to Sparrows that he would remember where they could be found. ) He was not happy to see me at all, and neither were the Chickens that he was landing on in his panic. I opened the door and stepped aside so that he could fly out. He wasted no time in doing so. I finished my chore and went into the house to tell Karen of his adventures.

Karen went out to do her chores and when she returned told me that she could hear his "killy killy" alarm call, but could not find him. I decided to check the Chicken house again. There he was stuck in a bit of space under the eves. I reached in and picked him up, taking him outside and again releasing him again. He didn't want me to catch him, but he show no real sign of distress when I did. He has not gone back in again, but he is still here.