Oct 15- searching for game

I have spent three days looking at various parts of the Ranch next door trying to find a population of Jacks that I could hunt without having to drive to get to them. It can get a bit expensive here, with the scarcity of gas stations locally. Considering I would burn two gallons just coming home from filling up.  Not complaining you understand, just explaining. Anyway, it is obvious that I am going to have to travel to find game in populations high enough to make it worth the effort. I have also developed a bone spur on my right foot, so the higher the population of Rabbits, the less walking that I have to suffer through.

I made some calls this morning to re-establish contact with the Ranches that I have hunted on in the past, and loaded Yogi in the car to see what is actually there. I also put my Varmint calling gear in to see what the Coyote populations are where I want to hunt.

Yogi is down to 1045 grams, and seems to be ready enough to hunt. There is a patch of Lava owned by two different Ranches, that has had good populations in the past. I checked the first side and found that the rancher had put a very large bunch of Cows on it, so decided to go to the other side which is much more extensive.

We began jumping Rabbits within 80 yards of the car. Yogi acted as though she was going to catch one, but only if it made a serious mistake. Well Jacks do not voluntarily"slip the mortal coils of this life" quite that easily. In fact the darn things are downright hard to catch. After an extensive hike around several hundred acres of habitat, that seemed to hold a good number of Jack Rabbits, it became quite plain that Yogi was looking more for volunteers than victims.

Perhaps she thought that they came prepackaged. She showed a lot of interest in what this box might hold.

She didn't get all that much food, compared to the exercise that she got trying to see if anyone wanted to surrender. I will check her again Saturday to see if her enthusiasm for surviving has kicked in enough to try just a bit harder.

Once she was loaded I drove further out the ridge line to an area that should hold Coyotes, and set up my calling gear.

The Ranchers in this area hire a Helicopter each year to gun the Coyotes. They kill large number of them as you might imagine. There was also something else going on with the Coyotes, and one theory that I have heard was that Parvo played a large part in the die off of Coyotes. I do know that they were scarce every where that I hunted last year. Where you used to hear Coyotes calling from several different directions, there is almost total silence.

I called from my setup for about 30 minutes and saw nothing at all. Confirming to me that there is nothing to stop the Rabbit populations from booming in the next year or two.

Oct 14- progress

The weather is changing a bit. Beautiful sunrise's are one of the indicators that make the changes worth while. It also heralds the arrival of winds. That is good, for me at least. I need the wind to be able to exercise Jessie. The apparent scarcity of Helium handicaps her building muscle to be able to fly well enough that she will be able to catch the Ducks that will soon be legal to pursue. One cannot buy Helium any more, at least not without some serious coercion.  So if the wind blows, I can get a Kite high enough in the air to make her work to get high enough to be able to catch the lure.

If I just take her out and turn her loose, she will fly in a short circle and try to get me to toss her the lure. I don't like to "lure fly" her,  ( swinging the lure and keeping her from grabbing it, is a form of exercise) since what I really want her to do is to get as high in the air as she can. With a balloon or the kite I can make her climb as high as 800 feet to be able to get the lure. What makes a successful falcon on Ducks or any other game is the height that she will maintain over any game that we flush. The higher she flies, the more ground she can control. The speed of gravity is 120 MPH. The best speed a duck can manage is 60 MPH. Jessie pumps towards the ground, so her speed is multiplied. It is said that Peregrines can fly at 250 MPH. in a dive. The faster the closing speed the less the effectiveness of any evasive maneuvers. So for her to go up as high as she will is paramount to her success.

I first flew Yogi this morning over at the Ranch. She was finally down to a weight that made her a bit more amenable. I took her to the field that we had flown two years ago. It was lousy with Rabbits. That was then. Today I only found one Rabbit in the entire field. There was little to no sign on the ground that a Rabbit had even visited the area. However looking at the ground for sign has its rewards as well.

This one is a new one for me. It is made of "Chert". Very delicate material, and I was quite surprised that it was still in one piece. To my limited knowledge, it appears to not be "indigenous" to this area. Oh well, it brightened up my day. Most of the Indian bullets that I see here are pretty coarse and a lot smaller. What most would call small game or bird points, but I guess Rabbit points would be more accurate.

Yogi needed a refresher on the Lure, so the day wasn't a loss. I know where not to go, Yogi got some exercise, and now knows that the lure can hold some good stuff.

The wind came up more and more as the day wore on. It was finally hitting 17 MPH and a bit more. I drug out the kite anyway with some misgivings. I replaced the wooden crosspiece for the kite with a fiberglass one. Wind this hard will snap the crosspiece for the kite and makes a mess. The only thing that I needed to worry about now was whether the kite would be shredded by the wind.

Yesterday I put the kite up, had it baited, and went to get Jessie. The wind had been steady, but as soon as I took Jessie's hood off the wind died and Jessie flew out in a short circle and waited for it to hit the ground. ;-/  After she had taken the lure the wind came back up and lifted the kite nicely back to where it should have been. Sigh!

That was certainly not a possibility today. I put the bait up about a 100 feet, and went to get Jessie. I looked up before I went into the weathering area and discovered that the lure had torn away from the release clip and fallen to the ground. I went back and reeled it back in, refastened it and again went to get Jessie. The same thing happened again.

This time I decided to take Jessie with me, sit her on the quad that I was using for a kite holder, get it in the air and hopefully get her in the air before the wind whipped and snapped it loose from the release.

This time it stayed up, and Jessie, reveling in the wind, went for a good fly. She flew for about 10 minutes, mostly out of sight. She finally worked her way back and managed to grab the wildly dancing lure and brought it to the ground. A few more days like this and we can begin to build some muscle on the girl. Season opens this weekend, but she isn't ready yet.