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.