Change in hunting times

I decided that I would change to evenings for our hunts. The temps in the mornings are down right discouraging, and the rabbits are on the move from their feeding spots to their day time territories. Here at the house I will have any where up to about 30 Jacks in the evenings, but they come from all around to come here to feed and get water. If I go out in the Sage flats around the house I may only see 3 or 4 Jacks. Besides it interferes with my exercises. At my age, I can't be missing my exercise, and I sure don't feel like exercising after an hour or two of hawking.

Not sure if you have ever given it much consideration, but rabbits have territories just like any other wild animal. There are only so many on a given amount of ground. The biggest and best get the best territories, and the rest have to commute. I do not know for sure how far away some of these rabbits are traveling to get to my lawn and hay stack, but I do know for sure that the only place that I can find them in such numbers is on the lawn. Our last hunt in the morning required about three hours to get about 10 slips at Jacks, and probably covered about 3 miles. This evening we had lots of chances and only covered perhaps a 1/16th of the ground that we did in the morning hunt.

Yogi as seems to be her norm, caught the first rabbit that we jumped. There was a bit of a variation this time, in that they both had their feet on the Jacks head. Puddy was apparently more excited and aggressive this time. They still were not grabbing each other, which is a wonder all on its own. In the past I was giving them an entire front leg as a reward for catching a rabbit. I have since been cutting a front leg in two pieces. This time I had to give Yogi a second piece of leg, so that Puddy could finish the one that I gave her. I figured it would possibly slow Yogi down enough that Puddy would have a chance to catch a rabbit on her own. Yogi has been on fire this year, which is great, but I would like Puddy to get back in the groove as well. Last year Puddy caught twice as many rabbits as did Yogi. Not this year.

I stuck my video camera on my head and made a short movie of the hunt. It can be viewed at this URL.
https://vimeo.com/51893350
The password is -   owyheeflyer