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.

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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.
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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.